A solution for Keene's Central Square

[varrin]

The Front Page of today's Keene Sentinel features an article titled: Nudity laws: Change needed? This link will likely expire soon, but the article appears identical to one published yesterday in the Union Leader, which is archived at Free Keene, which also features comments from people close to the actual events

Comments

Assumption and Advantage

[tlekas]

Good article!

Of course, this assumes that enough people who support the "breast-less" rules would contribute to support the park. If not and you got a majority on the other side the rules would be different. I understand why it was not advantageous to point this out in the article.

The best part of getting the government out is that there could be more than one park with a variety of rules. A larger part of the society could be happy!

Having government control of property and functions actually is a significant CAUSE of conflict in society. It is inevitable that if you have one set of rules and one way to run everything almost every one will be unhappy with some part of it. Freedom can promote peace in society!

This would not solve all such problems. Unfortunately there is a serious lack of tolerance in society. Consider all of the laws concerning what people may do on their own property. I do not have an answer to that.

[maineshark]

Of course, Central Square was built and maintained using tax dollars. Deeding it to a particular group with some particular goal would not be moral.

Likely the only workable solution would be to auction it off to the highest bidder (not hand it off to a specially-formed group with some particular ideology), and use the proceeds to reduce the tax burden of the current taxpayers. That wouldn't solve the issue of those who paid taxes in the past and are no longer residents, but it's an imperfect world.

Taking taxpayers' money to build and maintain something, then giving that thing to a special-interest group (of any sort) is not moral. The taxpayers, at minimum, deserve to be reimbursed to the best extent possible for the investment they were forced to make. And whomever is willing to make the best offer to enable that to happen should be able to purchase the park.

[varrin]

While I agree, in part, there are two sides to that coin. Unfortunately the immorality of what has already been done cannot be undone. There is no perfect solution.

The problem with a no-strings-attached auction is that many (maybe even a majority) of those who have supported the park so far would have their wishes violated. The fact that they have coerced tax funding of it is relevant, but not the only factor to consider.

In the end, any improvement is going to be imperfect and will have to be politically possible. An unrestricted highest-bidder sale would, in my opinion, be politically impossible. Coerced or not, criteria could be voted on by the current residents who have the legal right and moral authority to participate in that sort of way. That's a compromise, but it would be a step in the right direction and would be far more politically likely than an unrestricted sale.

V-

[maineshark]

Unless the vote is to reach a unanimous decision, it wouldn't have any moral basis. There's going to be someone there who is being coerced into paying for something he doesn't want.

While no options are perfect in an imperfect world, a highest-bidder sale is the option that comes closest. It doesn't allow any particular group to control the outcome, and demands the most possible funding to make the largest restitution to the victims that is possible.

As far as political feasibility, none of these options are. Those ranting about "there oughta be a law" won't leave private property alone, so even if a sale was somehow made, the situation would still exist.