Late last month, someone painted the bowl at the skate park the kind of pastel green that used to be found on prisons in the late 1950s. Some called it aqua; others saw a hint of mint. What the city saw was an unauthorized alteration to the skate park, which is city property at the south end of Riverfront Park. The city's initial reaction after discovering it on Oct. 23: It's graffiti.

Well, in a way: It's one continuous thin layer of featureless graffiti, but still -. One lead maintenance official estimated it could cost $500 to paint over it, to which a skater replied: "What color are they going to paint it? Cement?"

As of Tuesday night, the city had taken no action. The painted bowl is still there, with maybe a few new scratches from use.

Our take: The paint may not be a color we'd have chosen, but it did cover up some nasty graffiti that was much worse, including a swastika and a large drawing of an anatomical feature.

Readers who posted online comments to our Oct. 31 article about the unauthorized alteration to the park asked if $500 might not be better spent putting a few lights into the park's interior. That idea has some merit, but we suspect $500 wouldn't light up much and there's probably no money in the budget for the installation of lights or to pay for their illumination.

But then, we discovered that some people who use the skate park are bringing their own light.

About 8 p.m. Tuesday, the skate park would have been pitch black had it not been for what looked like a photographer's light stand set up by a group of men who were playing an intriguing game of what looked like bicycle polo. One polite young man came by to inquire whether an editor and photographer surveying the painted bowl with a flashlight were from the city. He asked us if we were going to paint over the paint.

"I think art is better than nothing," he said, in defense of the graffiti that was there before, but he said he thought that since it already was there, the paint should stay. We tend to agree.

We're not anarchists. It would have been nice if the volunteer mystery painter(s) who put so much time and effort into the bowl's new paint job had sought approval. But if this person(s) has lived in Corvallis for any time at all, he or she probably figured it would be easier (and much, much faster) to seek forgiveness rather than permission. But we see no harm - and none of the foul symbols and drawings that used to be there.

Our respectful suggestion to the city: It's not graffiti. It's an improvement. Let's call this one good and move on.