Antioch launches graffiti removal program

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jun 24, 2009 | by Hilary Costa

ANTIOCH -- Antioch resident volunteers will soon be pitching in to remove visual blight from the city's buildings, benches and utility boxes.

The new Graffiti Abatement Program, which the City Council presented Tuesday night, will harness good will and manpower of volunteers to paint over the visual blight, saving the city countless hours of staff time.

Last year public works employees responded to more than 1,000 calls of graffiti on city property alone -- to the tune of $43,000.

The new program will run on a startup budget of $5,000 for supplies, and operate out of an old city-owned truck that had been slated for the auction block, code enforcement director Ryan Graham said.

Volunteers will paint over tags on public property and, with written consent from the owner, on private property. Graham said he didn't foresee it being hard to get that consent.

"Almost without exception if somebody has graffiti on their property, it's because they're the victim of a vandalism," Graham said. "They didn't do it themselves."

The idea came out of the graffiti subcommittee on which Mayor Jim Davis and Councilwoman Martha Parsons sit.

"Eradication is what people want and they want it now," Davis said, referring to the "three E's" of graffiti: enforcement, education and eradication.

Graham said finding volunteers may prove easy; he had already received a handful of inquiries before the program's public announcement.

Reach Hilary Costa at 925-779-7166 or hcosta@bayareanewsgroup.com.