Litchfield Park has seen a spike in its graffiti problem this summer, and it has become one that is expensive and troublesome to fix, City Manager Darryl Crossman said.

Crossman and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office recently met to address the problem. Currently, police are surveying targeted areas more carefully and documenting what days of the week and hours of the day the vandals seem to be striking, said Capt. Terry Young of the Sheriff's Office.

"I think the efforts we've been putting forward have been having a pretty big impact," he said. "With school getting ready to start again, that'll help."

Crossman said he can already see a decline in activity, but vandals continue defacing on both public and private property, costing homeowners and public works employees time and money to remove the graffiti. Two or three workers from the Litchfield Park Public Works Department spend several hours per week removing graffiti, and with a crew of only 11, which includes volunteers, this becomes no easy task, Crossman said.

"It's destructive and obviously there's concerns from residents about where it stops," Crossman said. "It's too bad that some of them are very talented artists. I just wish they'd utilize their talent in positive ways."

The "them" Crossman refers to are likely teenagers with too much time on their hands, he said. Although Crossman and Young said the graffiti is not related to gang activity, residents and council members have indicated concern over the amount of tagging that has been happening.

The problem is not specific to Litchfield Park and in fact spans the Valley, Young said. Fountain Hills is another city seeing a spike in graffiti, possibly even bigger than in Litchfield Park, he said.

"Everybody's experiencing these issues," Young said. "It's summertime and kids are bored."