The City of Portland Graffiti Abatement program will sponsor eight (8) Saturday morning graffiti cleanups between March and October 2011. Interested neighborhoods/business associations should contact Graffiti Abatement Coordinator as soon as possible to be considered as a cleanup site.
Beginning in March, the cleanups will be held one Saturday each month from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. and will be a combined effort by City-contracted graffiti removal crews, and a minimum of 10 volunteers from the community. Be a part of the solution! Prior to the cleanup date, residents/businesses will be asked to survey their area and compile a list of sites that have been vandalized by graffiti and then to submit the list to Graffiti Abatement Coordinator at least a week ahead of the event.
The contractor-crews will focus on paint-out or power-wash removals from private properties (provided we have signed owner-permission prior to the event). Volunteers will remove graffiti from properties “in the right-of-way”, including utility poles, dumpsters, newspaper boxes, and other sites that are not routinely cleaned by agencies or owners.
Supplies will be provided by the Graffiti Abatement Program.
To participate, King will need to apply for one of 8 dates and have the minimum of 10 volunteers willing to do the removal and survey. The dates are from late March through October. If you are interested in seeing this happen in King this year, send us your information at info@kingneighborhood.org or come to our next meeting at 6:30 pm March 9th, at 4815 NE 7th.
Vandals will find abatement efforts entertaining. They will keep it up until they are caught and have to pay or repair property damage themselves.
Is there a legal reason that surveillance cameras are not set up at repeat violation sites? Motion detecting cameras with infrared flash can be had on Amazon for $80.
Yes, they will keep it up, especially if we as neighbors show we don’t care by not dealing with the problem. Studies show that letting the sun go down on graffiti only increases it. If they are caught and made to pay restitution, that is no guarantee they will be dissuaded. Tagging is not a profit analysis, it is a compulsion that they cannot control. I know of no legal reason anyone could not set up a camera monitoring any public place but the chances of obtaining actionable evidence against a tagger in a hoodie at night is slim. It’s not worth my while to set up a midnight sting operation against an anti-social tagger but it is worth it to me to not let the evidence remain. It’s too bad the City of Portland can’t afford to even clean its own property much less assist homeowners deal with it.
Trace. Please let us know if you have chosen a date for clean up. Todd and I would be happy to join the clean up crew again this year. I would like to get my son involved as well.
The board should be discussing the application at the next meeting. The more volunteer interest there is, the more likely this will happen.
Tentative dates for the 8 cleanups are:
MARCH 26
APRIL 30
MAY 21
JUNE 25
JULY 23
AUGUST 20
SEPTEMBER 24
OCTOBER 22
KNA selected the July 23rd date for the cleanup this summer. The time will be from 9:00 am to 1:00. The start time may be moved earlier depending on how warm the weather is. If you would like to volunteer or be kept abreast of the planning, send your email to trace.salmon@kingneighborhood.org