Committee to help decide the future of Slack Plaza
The Charleston Daily Mail reports Mayor Danny Jones has appointed an 11-member committee to help decide the future of Slack Plaza.
Charleston Mayor Danny Jones wants City Council members, county officials and local citizens to pitch ideas to redesign Slack Plaza.
Jones has formed an 11-member committee to deal with the controversial pedestrian thoroughfare between Summers and Laidley streets downtown. He announced the committee's formation during a City Council meeting on Monday.
Jones has long received complaints from citizens and business owners about people lingering at the park, making lewd comments and drinking alcohol.
The plaza was built as part of a pedestrian corridor between Capitol Street and Charleston Town Center. The Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority also has its main downtown bus stop on one side of the plaza.
In January, Jones had strips of metal spikes installed on the park's low stone walls to curb loitering. Jones said he's now hoping for a larger consensus to solve the park's problems.
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West Virginia, Charleston, WV
posted by oncee at 1:16 PM
3 Comments:
A committee? This reminds me of all those jokes that go like, "How many morons does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
Mr. Mayor, you don't need a committee--except, of course, for cosmetic purposes and damage control after all your stupid behavior.
All it takes to keep the park nice for everyone is to have a patrolman wander through every now and then to put a stop to individual misbehavior, directly and firmly. Nothing could be simpler.
By the way, Mr. Mayor, what's with the policeman and a police DOG walking through the park today? You don't need attack dogs to tell people to shut up or sit down or move on. This is yet another uglification, one that evokes Bull Conner (an Alabama cop in Alabama who used police attack dogs against unarmed nonviolent civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s), a suggestion that is *not* lost on the downtown people who use the park.
Mr. Mayor, all it takes is to set a tone. People everywhere respond to that. Mr. Mayor, this is what works in New York and other cities that are much more difficult to manage.
No tree, Mr. Mayor, ever made a lewd comment. No tree, Mr. Mayor, ever panhandled any pedestrian. None of those trees you condemned to death, Mr. Mayor, ever quarreled loudly and violently amongst themselves where people wait for buses. No tree, Mr. Mayor, ever drank from a prohibited open container. No tree, Mr. Mayor, ever sat on the back of a park bench with its dogshitted shoes all over the seat, or otherwise damaged a park bench. No tree, Mr. Mayor, ever left trash on the ground or spat great gobs of mucus onto the pavement.
You don't need to chop down trees, remove seating, mount additional orange floodlights from hell, or any of that, to make the park/thoroughfare a pleasant area of our downtown. All you need is the brains and the guts to enforce existing laws against harassment, littering, assault, public nuisance, and so forth. It's not rocket science.
This has nothing to do with Slack plaza, but click on this link. Its crap, but creepy crap.
http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_county_reports.asp?state=wv&county=Nicholas
Erm, cut 'n paste the link.
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