Downtown businesses want more help from the city and police in smothering a
graffiti problem that is costing companies thousands of dollars each year.
The Office of Neighborhood Services’ Anti-Graffiti Patrol – consisting of two city workers – removed graffiti from 453 downtown businesses in Providence over the past 16 weeks. Over the past three months, the office removed graffiti on 33,500 square feet of property on 320 sites, said Ann Gooding, special assistant to Providence Mayor David Cicilline for press and policy.
The Downtown Merchants Association monthly meeting Sept. 9 focused on the graffiti problem nagging downtown business owners and ways to put a stop to it.
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“Even with the graffiti patrol, all the feedback we get from downtown business owners is that graffiti is getting worse,” said Josh Miller, president of the merchants association and owner of Trinity Brewhouse.
The University of Rhode Island Providence campus on Washington Street replaced four windows at an expense of $4,000 because a graffiti artist etched a signature into them, and graffiti is a constant problem for the building, said Gary Lulli, director of facilities and operations for the campus.
“Eighteen windows along Westminster Street were etched recently and we can’t keep up with the graffiti,” Lulli said. “We paint a sacrificial coat over walls and it costs us $8,000 a year.
“The city should be paying for this and they should be cleaning this because they want more people to come here. With that comes more trash, more graffiti. They should have to keep up with those consequences.”
The Office of Neighborhood Services is researching the policies of cities with successful graffiti prevention programs and deciding whether or not it should be responsible for graffiti removal on private property, said Rita Murphy, director of the office, who attended the meeting to discuss the graffiti problem.
“During the spring and summer we are inundated with graffiti phone calls,” she said. “Should the city be responsible for removing graffiti from private businesses? With public buildings and schools, we have hundreds of properties to deal with and only two people removing (it).”
The neighborhood services office has just the two city workers for graffiti removal – who also keep grounds on public buildings. Staffing issues keep the office from responding to all phone calls.
“Other major cities require property owners to do their own removal, but right now, we really don’t have a policy. We are looking at whether we should stick to public properties or continue doing both,” Gooding said. “We hope to have something in place by spring 2005, when the graffiti starts up again,” since few incidents occur during the winter.
The office is also considering an automated graffiti reporting system and getting artists to paint murals in highly graffitied areas – a known deterrent – and enforcement policies to penalize offenders, Murphy said.
Right now, people can be charged for vandalism if they are caught in the act –normally between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. when few people are around to take notice, Providence Police Department Lt. Tim Lee said at the meeting.
The department deploys police in civilian clothes to look for graffiti artists, who often dress in black and carry backpacks full of spray paint, but staffing issues have also kept the police department from harnessing the problem.
Lee said the department is researching successful anti-graffiti enforcement policies in other cities and studying the culture of graffiti vandals, who post their work on Web sites like www.graffiti.org and revel in their expressions. Serial graffiti artists use “tags” – or signature marks – to make their work identifiable. The police collect photos of those tags to charge offenders on all accounts on file when they are caught, Lee said.
The graffiti in downtown Providence is mostly from students, people defying authority or trying to gain some notoriety, Gooding said. Gang-related graffiti mostly occurs in neighborhoods, with the exception of Waterplace Park where some gang graffiti has been identified, Lee said.
Lee suggests business owners photograph graffiti on their property before getting rid of it to give police evidence for files.
“Paint over graffiti immediately. These people do this for recognition. There is nothing more aggravating to these people than their graffiti being painted over the next morning so no one can see it,” Lee said.
As the city grapples over its graffiti policies, downtown businesses are taking matters into their own hands.
A Business Improvement District was approved Aug. 20 to assist the city in keeping downtown business properties clean. The organization will provide cleaning services beyond what the city provides, additional security, and marketing and promotions of BID-associated businesses.
Members, who will contribute between 3 percent and 4 percent of their property tax amount, will pay two-thirds of BID’s budget for those services. The other one-third will be paid voluntarily by property owners, who do not have to pay property taxes, said Dan Baudouin, executive director of the Providence Foundation.
