Buried somewhere within the City of Flin Flon’s Clean and Green strategy is a wish that society would go back to the way it used to be.
CAG, as the framework is acronymically known, aims to make our community cleaner, more visitor-friendly and even safer.
The specifics are being ironed out, but CAG could involve initiatives such as painting timeworn buildings, enforcing yard-maintenance laws, towing away derelict vehicles and ensuring Flin Flon is navigable through adequate traffic signage.
The aim is to make Flin Flon a more attractive, user-friendly community for residents and potential newcomers. This could have the added benefit of cutting crime, as the broken-windows theory holds that when citizens demonstrate they care about a community, illicit behaviour declines.
City council deserves praise for developing CAG. While it may seem like a somewhat minor initiative, it has the potential to breathe new life into Flin Flon at relatively little cost.
Just as the specifics of CAG are still being determined, so too are the “hows.” As in, how could the city encourage or compel citizens to beautify their own homes and properties as a starting point?
Many people believe the city shouldn’t have to compel anyone into fixing up their homes; that civic pride should be enough of a motivator. You know, like back in the day.
That attitude is simplistic. One of the realities council will face is that some residents with
shabbily exteriored homes lack the financial means to do anything about it. Attempts to shame those homeowners into showing “more pride” will therefore be fruitless.
Fortunately there is talk of CAG-related incentives (presumably financial incentives) in the upcoming city budget. If the city could meet lower-income homeowners halfway on new siding or a paint job, we could see splendour where we used to see eyesores.
Then again, the whole concept of a government entity devising aesthetic standards is a tricky one. At what point, exactly, does a property become an “eyesore”? That’s a question the city must carefully balance against the individual rights of homeowners.
There can be little debate over the merits of new traffic signage to make Flin Flon more navigable. Far too often residents say, “Oh, everybody knows where that is,” not realizing that a) there is a constant flow of old residents leaving and new residents arriving, and b) people from out of town are always here visiting.
Crime reduction is an interesting potential outcome of CAG, especially since crime occupies a much larger space in the public consciousness of Flin Flon than it did a decade ago.
But as Coun. Colleen McKee observed in outlining CAG last week, this “heightened fear in the community about safety” may not be warranted by the stats.
“I think lots of that has to do with social media and some of the comments [people make online],” McKee said. “I mean, we live in an age now where we have an opportunity to put whatever we think and feel [online] for everyone out there to see, and I think what it’s doing is it’s kind of creating some fear in our local residents, even though our crime hasn’t necessarily increased – it has in some areas, I’m not in denial saying it hasn’t increased – but I’m saying I don’t think it’s that huge of an increase.”
Indeed. In an era where folks constantly feel obliged to “weblicize” their own victimization at the hands of petty thieves and such, it’s only natural that Flin Flon’s crime situation would become a tempest in a teapot.
CAG could reduce actual crime; whether it can reduce the perception of crime is another story.
That said, CAG is a solid concept that deserves buy-in from Flin Flonners. At the same time, residents should not be quick to judge homeowners whose humble abodes are a little too humble.
It may not be so much insufficient pride as insufficient funds.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
