As the Shoefiti Swings Shoefiti made the news this week for those sitting at home watching FOX 9 on Friday night. Tom Lyden did a good job with the story, considering the time constraints of television (How does one explain the potential motivations behind shoefiti then explain Xcel's role in the problem in a few minutes?). While meeting with Mr. Lyden on Friday morning, he came to the conclusion that (to paraphrase) "the real story here is Xcel," which is exactly what I've been trying to get across on this list. It doesn't really matter why the shoes on the powerlines. As long as the shoes are correlated with blighted neighborhoods, Xcel Energy should be a good neighbor and take them down.
Based on my conversation with Mr. Lyden, I think he started correlating shoefiti with nefarious activity after first hearing about it either on this forum or the Minneapolis Observer, followed by noticing shoes hanging near sites of recent crime stories he's covered. Lyden, in his reporting, like the members of this forum, wasn't able to draw any solid conclusions about why shoefiti exists. Instead, he reinforced the correlation between nefarious activity and shoefiti with a couple specific examples from stories he's recently covered. Property Owners, is it fair that you have 10 days to remove graffiti from your property, yet Xcel Energy can go more than four months without responding to requests to remove shoes dangling from their property? Xcel Energy's response to Tom Lyden's news story was that they are too busy taking care of other things like power outages. However, their comment doesn't hold water when held up to the facts of this situation. Shoes have been hanging in Phillips and Central since March 28th, yet Xcel has removed shoes hanging in other neighborhoods since then. Thats also an odd statement coming from a company with $78 million in income in the past quarter. Property Owners, how do you think the city would respond if you told them you were too busy to keep your property graffiti free? A customer service representative at Xcel Energy (probably the 50th I've spoken to this year) told me last week that she couldn't give me a tracking number for the support ticket I created. She said it's up to the supervisor in the area by the shoes to decide whether to address the problem. Obviously, if the shoes were affecting power in the area they would be taken down. Based on their current inconsistent policies, Xcel has passively contributed to the perceived blight of certain neighborhoods to the West of Hiawatha Avenue while actively removing shoes to the East of Hiawatha. Unfortunately, due to the danger of dealing with powerlines, it looks like I'm being forced to escalate this relatively minor action beyond customer service requests and beyond the embarrassment of some local publicity in order to get Xcel Energy to take responsibility for their property. I propose that members of this forum start using the Minneapolis Police Graffiti Reporting Form to report cases of Shoefiti. http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/contact/email-form-graffiti.asp Hopefully, this will generate a case similar to graffiti, requesting the property owner "... restore said surface to an approved professional state of maintenance and repair. (82-Or-106, § 15, 6-11-82)" http://www.iir.com/nygc/Municipal%20Codes/municipal%20codes--graffiti.htm As I understand it, that would cause the city to verify that the shoes are on the line, request Xcel to remove the shoes in 10 days, and then escalate the case after 10 days if Xcel does not comply with the request. Apparently, this could eventually lead to fines, which may be the only way to light a fire under this company. I consider using the citys resources to solve an issue involving a private company to be a failure, so if anyone can think of other non-governmental tactics to solve this problem, please share. -Ed Kohler Still Shoeless in Cooper REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[email protected] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
