In a city where legalistic manipulation and interpretation has been used to call land that a developer was reimbursed over $100,000 an acre for “blighted” or to say that the city of Branson owns the name “Branson” is it any surprise that a “bicycle” could meet the legal definition of a “skateboard?” Or is it that a skateboard could meet the definition of a bicycle?
To help in the analysis of those two weighty questions, let’s start off with a simple two choice multiple choice question, “A two wheeled device powered by the user is “a. Skateboard” or “b. Bicycle?” Actually, thanks, at least in part, to the same legal leadership that led the city into the Branson “name gate” fiasco, both would be correct under proposed changes to an ordinance that were presented to the Branson Board of Aldermen at their Aug. 27 meeting.
In the Aug. 26 edition of this paper the Ole Seagull reported, “The board will also consider an ordinance prohibiting the riding of any non-motorized skate, skateboard or scooter, or any type of non-motorized vehicle, including bicycles, upon any parking lot, sidewalk, pedestrian ramp, public parking garage facility, retaining wall, stairway, step, stonework, or similar structure, located on property owned or controlled by the City of Branson…” On Aug. 30, the city of Branson’s Public Information Director, Jerry Adams, called the Ole Seagull to let him know that the proposed ordinance didn’t pertain to bicycles, that the article was in error, and that a citizen had attended the meeting because of that error.
Didn’t the board itself actually approve a motion, by a 6 to 0 vote, to postpone taking any action on the proposed ordinance until its Sep. 24 meeting? Didn’t that motion say that the action was being taken so that city attorney Paul Link, “Has an opportunity to further look into this and see what a non motorized vehicle is, if that is a bicycle and to come back to us with some definition of terminology in Section F and to make some further recommendations to us.”
Doesn’t subsection G of the proposed change, say “The term Skate, Skateboard or Scooter shall be defined as any one, two three or four wheeled device powered by the user?” Is a bicycle not a two wheeled device powered by the user?
“Oh come on Seagull, use a little common sense?” When it comes to the legalistic, the time to use common sense is before a law is passed because after it’s passed it will mean what the judges, lawyers, and those with the controlling power, money, and vested interests say it means. Common sense would tell most people that a piece of vacant land valued at $100,000 plus per acre isn’t blighted but the law says it is. Common sense would tell most people that a skateboard and a bicycle are not the same thing but that’s not the way the proposed change was written.
How much easier it would have been if the person having the legal responsibility for writing the proposed change had simply added the words “except for bicycles after the word “user” in the proposed subsection G, kept subsection F simple by omitting the words “any type of non-motorized vehicle,” and put all the regulations pertaining to bicycles in one appropriately titled subsection and all those pertaining to the operation of skates, skateboards and scooters in another.
Just today, for the second day in a row, the Ole Seagull noticed an adult riding their bicycle down the side walk on Commercial Street. When he stopped the person and asked them if they knew it was against the law to do so they said they did not. Wouldn’t it be a better use of Adam’s time to write a press release telling citizens that it is a violation of the law to ride a bicycle on a public sidewalk in a business district?
