Political leaders in Maine’s largest municipal welfare magnet have a new idea for pretending that public drug use and urination will disappear – paint.
Under increasing pressure from upscale Monument Square businesses to get rid of the walking, stalking homeless blight, the Portland city manager announced a public-art project.
Danielle West is apparently hoping to paper over the fact that, according to the nonprofit business group Portland Downtown, one of every five Congress Street storefronts are vacant.
What to do to wave away public intoxication, harassment of shoppers, litter, public defecation?
Buy some multi-colored paints and sponsor a paint-in, kinda like the stuff the baby boomers did in free-love San Francisco in the 1960s. (Think tie-dyed t-shirts for inspiration.)
West is calling the approach an “art installation.”
City officials are also offering interest-free loans to businesses wanting to gussy up their streetside display windows.
(They either forgot or more likely don’t care that someone – i.e., hard-working taxpayer Joe Sixpack – has to pay for those “free” loans.)
Joe The Plumber is already paying through the nose trying to keep Portland’s sidewalk dwellers up to snuff.
To wit, Portland spends 50 times more per person on welfare than other Maine cities and 88 percent of all general-assistance dollars, according to House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor).
Maybe paint will help.
Meanwhile, business owners in the central commercial district of Maine’s most liberal city are hoping against hope that the plans for spirited sidewalk art can change the narrative of public wine-swigging, needle-addicted, sidewalk-defecating dregs living in sleeping bags along the curb.
“We need help,” David’s Restaurant owner David Turin told the city earlier this year. “Businesses like mine and others around us, it’s not a problem we can just endure, and we can’t wait it out.”
Merchants like Turin say they’re being overwhelmed by growing amounts of trash, drug use, public urination, theft and aggressive behavior.
What self-respecting downtown commodities broker dressed to the nines on a Saturday summer evening is ready to shell out $19 for a starter basket of mussels, $16 for a wedge salad, $39 for a main entree of Tournedos au Louvre and $14.25 for a Spicy Ong Lai ($88.25 plus tip) to peer out the window at a stringy-haired, bloodshot-eyed vagrant in urine-drenched trousers, vomiting?
West, Turin & Co. are praying said broker can wait for the proverbial paint-in.
“One of the ways to make sure that people continue coming back is to encourage and have a safe space that’s clean, friendly and inviting,” West said. “We’re trying ways to make that happen.”
While waiting for the paint to dry, the Portland Police Department is preparing to open a substation downtown. Taxpayer cost? Unknown.
Starting today (July 1), “downtown ambassadors” will also begin patrolling Monument Square.
The “ambassadors” will answer questions, “connect people with services” (think welfare) and report ongoing crime.
Maybe even bag some needles and trashed, urine-filled brandy bottles along the way.
“Paints” quite a picture, doesn’t it?
