Picketing: Extreme Peer Pressure

A few years ago, in an article in the Grants Pass Daily Courier about my problem with the litter and weed problems in this city, our then-City-Manager Laurel Samson said, “We enforce our nuisance codes by peer pressure.”  Trouble was then and still is that almost no peers are willing to apply it.  Like any necessary evil, it doesn’t necessarily win one friends, and it can be dangerous when one tries to correct a disorderly person.  This is why we have police, public nags, to do dangerous jobs like telling someone that one’s property is disorderly and one needs to clean it up.

But our city police presently are forbidden to enforce or even notice property maintenance and other city codes, the better to enforce state laws, one supposes, though our City Charter demands that the Manager enforce all city codes and does not mention state laws.  Our previous manager, David Frasher, in 2006 set up a Code Enforcement Department of non-sworn officers, soon renamed as “Community Service Officers,” (CSOs) supposedly to enforce city codes, but actually to be the place where property nuisance complaints go to die, while complaints about other code violations like lack of sign permits and fees are enforced. 

When nuisances ripen into safety hazards, CSOs eventually cite and abate the hazard.  But even hazards are not enforced against until they become a big enough hassle to clean up that the responsible party might let the city to do it for profit.  They used to charge a 10% of cost administration fee for hazard abatements; it recently was raised to 20%.  After all, people will clean up a minor nuisance or safety hazard with only a warning from a cop, which makes no money for the city. 

          But the purpose of nuisance codes is to stop safety hazards from developing.  When police won’t do their job of necessary nagging, the responsibility for it falls on private people, “peer pressure,” as Ms. Samson said.  This Litter Cleaner has been applying a subtle kind of peer pressure for the last year, demonstrating cleaning of litter on private and public properties.  It has been too subtle, and subtlety doesn’t work for a protest.  

It’s time to make it blatant, by picketing one property at a time, starting with the most egregious offender, a restaurant that piles empty boxes out front of their store under their overhang, an obvious safety problem.  Let’s see how long it takes them to clean up their exterior with a protester holding a sign for a couple of hours per week and handing out leaflets. 

          (It took about a half-hour, and was not pleasant for anyone involved.  The next target is Walmart, which is the biggest offender, will be tougher, and won’t take it so personally.)