Shortly after this year’s street repainting at S.E. 9th and Sherrett Street was completed this year, the city received an anonymous complaint that the image was “too political” and represented “urban vandalism”, although there was no mention of which part had offended. Perhaps it was the sight of Superman feeding a 1930’s car to a dinosaur – because that is mostly the part that is to be removed. If you didn’t see it on the street, or in THE BEE, you shortly will have missed your chance.

Greg Raisman from the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) came to examine the design and speak at a neighborhood meeting. He advised that since the current design was not specific to the original permit document, it needed to be redone. This came as a surprise to the painting committee.

The initial process for getting approval for the city permit years ago had been arduous, and neighbors had been assuming that the center of the design could be altered every year following community discussion and design approval. However, PBOT advised that for such a change to be made, notice had to be given to every resident within a two-block radius of the intersection.

The city gave neighbors 60 days to “repair the image” (restore the original design), or it would have to be painted over. This distressed many neighbors, who had enjoyed the creative spontaneity and community-building leading to this year's design.

Hannah Poirier, “Placemaking Coordinator” for the Village Building Convergence (VBC), commented that permits for “Intersection Repair” painting allow renewing the same image annually. “Share-It-Square has been mostly keeping the same image, with the bricks and sharrows; but it has been changing its central image every year,” she pointed out. PDOT “just wants neighbors to get a permit each year, if they're going to change the image at all.”

Volunteers quickly contacted every resident within the required area in writing or orally, and organized a new “repainting” event for August 11. Neighbor Mark Lakeman, owner of Communitecture and co-founder of Portland’s City Repair Project, advised that in order to avoid repainting the entire design, the community would probably just paint over this year’s pictorial “superhero” scenes, and insert patterns of the red and yellow “background bricks” that form the main spiral.

Lakeman told THE BEE, “We view this process as an opportunity for increasing our skills in communication with the community. We’ve OK’d the design with residents in the required area, and received approval from community members who attended our meetings. We’re hoping that the new changes we’ll make will comply with our permit. We plan to coordinate future designs more closely with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, since repainting requires extra time and money, and we can’t always depend on good weather. This time, though, we’ll be able to use the paint we have on hand.

“However, this incident points out the weakness of a complaint-driven system,” he reflected. “In spite of all our efforts, and the resultant joy in community-building that this project has accomplished, a majority of the community has been inconvenienced by a single anonymous complaint. When we vest authority in the City to handle problems ‘remotely,’ it removes from our hands a crucial community-building opportunity.

“If nothing else, the incident is a cautionary tale about making sure to read and understand all the ‘fine print’ during the permit process.”