Atlantic City taxpayers are spending nearly $40,000 to redo a Black Lives Matter street mural because it was confusing drivers and causing a traffic hazard.
According to Fox News, the mural, which reads “Black Lives Matter” in massive yellow letters that stretch the entire width of the street, was covering up the yellow and white lane markers. The sign caused such a safety hazard, in fact, that the road actually finally had to be barricaded off to drivers.
Perhaps most asininely, the New Jersey city itself had actually given protesters permission to paint the mural in the first place as a compromise, after the group originally suggested wanting to paint the boardwalk.
But apparently, the road can’t simply be painted over because of the type of paint used for the mural, meaning the entire stretch now has to be completely repaved. That effort on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will cost the city $36,000, Fox adds. The mayor added that the words can be repainted on the street afterwards, but only in such a way that they don’t obscure the road markers.
Similar street murals have been painted on streets in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Minneapolis and St. Petersburg, Florida.