Scott Swanson
Many rural Oregonians have DNA that includes a streak of “don’t tread on me” and that’s certainly true in Sweet Home.
But, as we’ve seen from the deliberations emanating from City Hall, “live and let live” sometimes must needs have limits.
As has become painfully evident to anyone who’s recently passed by the southeast corner of 6th Avenue and Juniper Street, laissez-faire gone to an extreme isn’t good for anyone, not even the principals.
As described in our story on page 1, city officials have gotten an earful from neighbors sick of the mess at that location and, frankly, just about no one is happy about the situation.
It’s a difficult one that, actually, the city has tried to address, but with little visible or permanent results.
Reading on in the story about the council’s meeting, in which neighbors voice their concerns about the aforementioned situation, we note that the council has finished creating new city laws that are intended to give city officials some clout in dealing with “abandoned” recreational vehicles, open fires, broken windows, storage of junk, etc.
A lot of what’s described there applies pretty directly to the blight at 6th and Juniper.
This situation is complicated by an absentee owner – a bank – and the fact that although the city has taken abatement action, it definitely hasn’t been consistent.
Private property is a right that is important. Nobody, least of all those with that DNA described above, want some bureaucrat telling them what to do with their property.
But at the same time, when one joins a community, one takes on responsibility.
By moving into a city, one is morally and, to some extent, legally obligated to be a good citizen. That’s why city dwellers can’t hold loud parties at 1 in the morning or shoot firearms in their yards (front or back). That’s why there are city codes, rules about, well, doing a lot of the stuff the inhabitants of 913 6th Ave. have been. Yeah, you can be left alone but if what we’re doing is adversely impacting neighbors, it’s time we are taken to account.
Given what we’ve heard from them in our report in this issue, it’s pretty obvious why they are upset, scared.
The fundamental responsibility of government, at any level, is to protect citizens. That’s the responsibility of officials in Washington D.C. It’s the responsibility of officials in Portland. It’s the responsibility of the police, of code enforcement, and of the City Council members in Sweet Home.
We get that the permissive laws and “woke” judges in our state can make it difficult to come up with a decisive solution to the problem, but it needs to be solved, because blight has a bad tendency to spread.