Lipstick on a Pig
November 29, 2024
Imagine yourself, if you will, as the mayor or a councilor of a midsized city. Such as St. Catharines, for example. The downtown core of your city is in shambles. Local officials grudgingly admit that among the business community, there’s been a higher rate of failure than normal. Graffiti is everywhere, vandalism is rampant and increasing numbers of vagrants are occupying the streets. So much so that you’ve had to put in a cage around the library to keep the homeless from camping out there. Not surprisingly, many city residents are now eschewing the downtown over safety concerns.
You and your colleagues, while not solely to blame by any means, have more than earned your share of blame for the situation. You keep adding excessive regulations and hiking taxes, further adding to the burden for small business owners who have somehow managed to keep their heads above water. Just recently, in fact, you approved additional levies against them to support an unaccountable business association whose mandate it is to advocate for and promote the downtown. Yet that organization, whose leaders remain seemingly oblivious to the real-world problems facing their involuntary members, instead acts as a left-wing political action group and at times, expressly works against their interests. While those struggling business owners desperately try to dig their way out of debt, these people measure “success” by the number of hanging flower baskets and pollinator gardens in their catchment area.
You exacerbate the problem by dreaming up new and inventive ways of discouraging would-be customers from coming downtown. Such as barring access to an entire city-owned parking garage to anyone without a smartphone and similarly barring access to many on-street alternatives. Even for those with smartphones, you insist on an app which many find confusing and difficult to use.
So what’s your next move?
Do you lower taxes? Cut back on the regulations? Make it easier to park?
No. The answer is much more obvious.
You put out a call to the community for local artists to come forward to paint murals on the storefronts of business owners you helped to drive out of downtown. Turn vacant storefronts into vibrant displays of art, you say. Fostering community engagement and celebrating local talent. Showcasing the rich artistic and cultural diversity of the area.
Why didn’t I think of that?
In other words, cover up the problems you created with pretty pictures.
Put lipstick on a pig.
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