Mayor Kelly, the Keystone Kouncillors, and the SAME old thinking

Don't get me wrong, I am not a fan of tagging on personal/business private property, although I think mailboxes, lightposts and the like are reasonable targets. Tags on such things don't impinge on my eyes any more than the ridiculous numbers of logos everywhere nowadays. After all - it's all just branding, some corporate, some personal. SAME has been treating Halifax to a taggathon recently, and unfortunately has been targeting mostly private property to everyone's dismay.

So - what is the city council's response - perhaps increased enforcement? Cameras at likely targets? Increased fines/penalties for graffiti?

NO.

According to the Chronically Horrid - "Property owners who don’t remove graffiti in a timely fashion could be billed for the cleanup by Halifax Regional Municipality under a bylaw in the works at city hall.

"We’ve expressed our concern as a police department how important it is that this bylaw is put in place," Const. Jim Bennett, Halifax Regional Police’s community response officer, said Monday at a seminar on graffiti. "It’s not the be-all and end-all to graffiti, but it’s definitely a tool that will help us combat it."

Municipal staffers have been working on the bylaw since last year. It could be introduced at regional council as early as May 1. Const. Bennett said the bylaw would give property owners 10 days to clean up graffiti or face municipal action.

He said municipal policy calls for the removal of graffiti from city-owned property within three to five days, "so it’s not too much to ask private property owners to do it in twice that amount of time. If they fail to remove graffiti from their property, the city will come in and clean it up and we’ll bill them for it."

He said property owners could also be fined under the bylaw."

Ah yes, the hoary old "blame the victims cliché", (perhaps they should extend this brilliant idea and make the victims of assaults in the downtown pay for being beaten up while they are at it. And what about rape victims? Didn't they ask for it?)

In the cities defense "Statistics show that graffiti removed within 24 hours is rarely replaced, Const. Bennett said. If graffiti is left in place for 14 days before being removed, vandals will almost certainly tag that property again. Some private property owners refuse to remove graffiti and it just allows the person next to them to become a target, because graffiti vandals like to return to a location where they know they’re getting a return on their efforts."

By Googling 'Graffiti Removal 24 hours" all that I have been able to find is this statement repeated again and again, on different cities pages. I suspect the source is the fictional New York of Mayor Rudy Giuliani - you know, the one where they cleaned up graffiti, picked up litter, rousted the homeless and the crime rates dropped? Except if you read 'Freakonomics' you'll know that the crime rate dropped, because the proportion of people between 16-25 who commit most of the crimes dropped dramatically, due to the aging baby boom and bust. Cites that did nothing saw the same drop.

But don't worry - they also are considering "fines for people caught with graffiti paraphernalia such as spray paint and markers". I'm sure they will only charge those who are bad people, or with bad intent, not people who might possess paint or markers for innocent purposes (if there are any 'innocent purposes' for such obviously dangerous items) I'm sure the police in their zeal would never make mistakes - just ask Mahir Arar, James Driskell,Donald Marshall, Jr., David Milgaard or Guy Paul Morin. I mean, it's not like anyone will try to do something stupid like banning carry on liquids from airplanes, while (still) not screening the cargo on the same flight.

Hey - Mayor Kelly - it's called private property because it's PRIVATE. How about taking some of the 30% extra tax dollars you've collected from soaring house valuations (thank God the graffiti has kept valuations down, just imagine...) and put it into 1) Enforcement - Catch SAME, and punish him/her - 500 hours community service removing tags perhaps? 2) Clean-up (offer free clean-up to vandalised property owners if you think it is so critical pay for it with y(our) tax windfall)

And let's see how the city is doing with its own rules - seems to me the Spring Garden Library took longer than 10 days to clean up - didn't it Peter? In the next few weeks I'll try to document not only the coming, but the going of graffiti in our public spaces. But don't worry - I'm sure the city will fine itself if it failed to live up to it's own standards...

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