Town official criminally charged for repainting faded crosswalks

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No good deed goes unpunished.

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You try and help, and all you get is criticism.

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Amateur.


https://www.google.nl/search?q=roze+vluchtheuvel&sa=X&es_sm=122&biw=1366&bih=609&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ved=0CCEQsARqFQoTCNPa_vOh78YCFVJL2wodEWULkg#tbm=isch&q=roze+vluchtheuvel+wijchen

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He should have consulted with Richard Ankrom first.

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Selectman Simolaris committed not one, but several criminal acts.

Count 1: Failure to sand, prime, and clean the surface
Count 2: Failure to paint straight lines
Count 3: Failure to use masking tape
Count 4: Failure to apply paint evenly
Count 5: Use of a brush and roller instead of a spray gun
Count 6: Application of one thick coat instead of three thin coats with drying time in between coats
Count 7: Use of off-the-shelf color instead of consulting Pantone swatch book

The judge needs to impose the strictest sentence the law will allow to stop this crime trend of do-it-yourself crosswalk painting!

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Whoah, pal, you just took away five public employee union jobs there.

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Also Iā€™ve got to wonder if he even used the right kind of paint. Traffic paint is very different from the kinds of paint youā€™re likely to find on the shelf at most hardware stores.

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Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode of ā€œThe Potholeā€, even though this guy was just fixing an existing (and fading) city feature. https://youtu.be/bewrXPdwhYE?t=2m38s

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Doubtful. And based on the mention at the end of his paint job smearing all over the road, it sounds like he didnā€™t do a particularly good job of refreshing the crosswalks, either. I mean, if you want a send a message, do a shitty job painting ONE crosswalk. But to do 6 of them? Come on, man. Great intentions, terrible execution. Now somebody has to go and undo the job that you did, and then paint them properly.

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Given the amount of smearing and the substantially uneven opacity visible in the first picture; Iā€™d be pretty certain that he didnā€™t use the right stuff.

For low traffic, temporary, or other light duty use asphalt paints arenā€™t particularly exotic, the asphalt surface itself isnā€™t especially tricky, so people can and do get away with using ordinary paint of adequate weather resistance and opacity.

If you actually want the markings to survive under heavier use, though, you would normally be looking at either thermoplastic paints that are applied hot and bind to the asphalt or epoxy based paints.

You can see the contrast in the first image between the white ā€˜paintā€™ areas(which are visibly raised, especially where the cross-stripes overlap the parallel lines and they were applied in double thickness) and the green areas, which appear to be an ordinary paint layer. Hard to say from just that picture if the white areas have any retro-reflective beads embedded or not.

It seems like quite a dick move to make a fuss about it, especially since those smears arenā€™t going to last long under traffic, weather, and snow plows; but I would be very, very, surprised if this DIY marking attempt lasts properly. The ā€˜respect for the governmental processā€™ nonsense is too silly to even pretend to engage with.

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Not to mention, from the article, the crosswalks in question are due to be torn up due to construction any way. So painting them (properly) now would just be a waste of money when theyā€™d have to be repainted afterwards any way.

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Then the city should have communicated that to the public or the officials who have to handle public comments.

ā€œThis is due to be fixed as part of a major road upgrade that is happening at X. Weā€™re not doing it now to avoid spending taxpayer money on improvements that will be destroyed soon.ā€

Problem solved!

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Based on this more detailed article, it sounds like itā€™s a case of him knowing full well that they were part of the ongoing project, but he was just annoyed that it was taking too long (they were supposed to be painted in May).

Also - dude is a painter by trade. He didnā€™t know that this paint would be an awful choice for the crosswalks? At the very least - block off a section, paint it, wait for it to mostly dry, then paint the next section. Look at how the paint smeared out into the intersection in the main picture. That means that there are at least a handful of people out there with green paint splattered up on their cars from going through that intersection.

The plans were available for public scrutiny in a locked filing cabinetā€¦ (fill in with description from Hitch-Hikerā€™s Guide).

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Yeah, if this was some kind of viral marketing stunt for his services Iā€™d say it backfired pretty badly.

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Why didnā€™t he just paint a penis on it instead?

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If the public-works guys were actually sandbagging selectmen such that they couldnā€™t get a straight answer on a fairly simple ā€œWhat is the timeline on repair for X, Y, and Zā€, then somebody needs to crush them with extreme prejudice.

If, however, the selectman in question couldnā€™t be bothered to take his constituentsā€™ questions about an infrastructure issue and send them off to the correct public works person; I am unimpressed. Yes, in an ideal world, it would be 100% obvious for even the layman exactly who you need to ask about a specific thing, and this isnā€™t always true as organization get larger; but if you are supposed to be a representative, itā€™s arguably your job to be able to bring a modest amount of organizational knowledge to bear on getting questions routed to the right people.

If those people deliberately make wringing information out of them harder than needed, then they need a smackdown; but if you are supposed to be a representative but canā€™t be bothered to familiarize yourself with who to call for various questions, you might not be doing your job.

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I believe you have gotten the image of John Curran wrongā€¦

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Wish I could get me a cap like those!