Published: April 10, 2009 10:19 pm      

Galveston board should take action

THE ISSUE:Galveston code enforcement.

OUR VIEW:This is an issue town board members were elected to address.

Galveston officials should be lining up behind a group of local residents campaigning to clean up their town.

For the second month in a row, members of a citizens group appeared before the town board this week to ask for the enforcement of local ordinances concerning unsafe structures and junk. They are particularly concerned about junk that has accumulated on property owned by one of the members of the town board.

Come on, folks, this isn’t complicated.

One of the primary functions of local government is to establish rules by which residents of a community agree to live and then to enforce those rules. Agreeing to follow those rules is the price of living in civilized society.

It is patently absurd to argue that what happens on private property is no one’s business but that of the property owner. Neighbors have a clear stake in what’s happening next door.

Properties strewn with junk are eyesores that reflect badly on the entire community. They can drive down the value of every house on the block.

They can also create a hazard to the public health, providing a habitat for rats and other vermin.

And in this case, residents are complaining about junk that they say is not only scattered on private property, it’s spilling over onto the sidewalk.

These are the sorts of issues that town board members were elected to address.

Folks who invest their hard-earned money in a home in Galveston have a right to expect their elected representatives will look out for their interests, and if those representatives fail in their obligation, local voters should not hesitate to vote them out of office.

Of course, they won’t get a chance to do that for more than two years. The next municipal election is scheduled for 2011.

But they can do what the First Amendment expressly allows them to do. They can petition their government for a redress of grievances. And they can keep at it until somebody finally takes action.

– Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, and Kokomo Tribune