RED WING, MINN. – You can blame Donald Trump. Or Prince. Or maybe you can blame both for an initiative under consideration by the Red Wing City Council to restrict or ban painting on Barn Bluff — a massive promontory rising 400 feet above the Mississippi River that has served as a kind of public bulletin board since the late 1950s.
Some high school kids raised the town's hackles two years ago when they painted "Trump" on the rock that generally serves as a place for memorials, American flags or the annual nod to the graduating year of the local high school's senior class. Someone later altered the sign to read "Dump Trump."
The city quickly painted over it.
Within weeks, local residents Joe Gibart and Brian Paton followed up with a Prince tribute on the bluff after the singer died of an accidental overdose of painkillers. Someone complained to the city at a time when it was developing a master plan for Barn Bluff, a major tourist attraction and sacred Indian burial ground known by the Dakota people as He Mni Can.
Although it's illegal to deface public and private property in Red Wing with graffiti, the city has a policy of ignoring it on Barn Bluff — unless someone complains. Then, according to city documents, the City Council president, vice president and mayor consider whether the complaint is "warranted because the painting is of a political nature or is profanity."
No one seems to know how the Prince memorial crossed that line, but city staff was told to cover it up. Riding a public outcry, Gibart and Paton restored the Prince memorial, adding "16" to the wall to recognize that year's high school graduating class. The painting went on.
Last year, the city hired a research firm to conduct a scientific, randomized survey of 400 residents to see how they feel about the town. Among the questions — What should be done about Barn Bluff graffiti?
Forty-nine percent said that painting should never be allowed; 23 percent said it should be allowed without any restrictions; 18 percent said it should be allowed with some restrictions; and 10 percent were unsure. The survey has an error rate of plus or minus 5 percentage points.