PONTIAC - The Walldogs may be coming to Pontiac.

The Pontiac City Council decided Monday to invite the organization of artists to come to town to paint murals on downtown buildings. It also authorized Mayor Scott McCoy to assemble a committee to handle the details of the visit.

The organization gathers at a community to paint murals. In exchange, the host community provides liability insurance, food and lodging to the artists and a payment of $1,200 to a designated project leader of each mural.

Questions were raised at the council meeting last week about the insurance aspect of the event.

"I don't object at all to this and I hope that we can find every reason to do it," Alderman John McGlasson said. "I do think that we need to know these things in advance."

City Administrator Bob Karls wrote a memo to the council saying IML Risk Management, the city's insurer, assured him the city's existing insurance would cover this.

McCoy said Karls asked IML all the questions the board asked about personal injuries and property damage.

"He asked all of those questions and they said that we were covered so (Karls) was very confident about it," McCoy said.

Bill Diaz, owner and operator of Diaz Sign Art, proposed the Walldogs event and made a presentation about it last week to the council.

Diaz said that he has been involved with several Walldog events, including the 2002 event in Atlanta, and the communities became more attractive to tourists. The Pontiac murals could highlight the city's heritage as a Route 66 community.

He said a Walldogs event takes a year to plan, so the earliest it could be in Pontiac would be 2009.