CORONA - Louis Ybarra and Alex Castro spend each day scrubbing stucco and repainting brick walls.

They make up the two-man graffiti abatement team for the city of Corona, each working 40 hours a week water-blasting and re-painting sidewalks, Dumpsters, light poles and block walls. They also remove stickers placed on street signs.

"Whatever we see we take off," Ybarra said. "We try to eliminate whatever we can. It's a blight on the city."

About 10 years ago, Corona started the graffiti removal program to combat the area's graffiti problems.

Employees of the program, often times responding to calls from residents, are responsible for removing graffiti and illegal signs from all public, commercial and private property.

"A lot of cities don't do that," said Randy Kuettle, Corona facilities and building supervisor who oversees graffiti removal. "We have a release form, a waiver of liability, that business owners and residents can sign so we can work on their property. That's unique to our city."

The cost of the program, which is run by the Public Works Department, is about $168,000 and covers staffing, removal and equipment. Most of the funding comes from the city's general budget, with $40,000 of the dollars coming from the city's Community Development Block Grant funding - money earmarked to benefit low- and moderate-income residents. Local businesses and residents also donate some white and neutral paint used to cover up the graffiti.

Public Works manager Curtis Showalter said the program has been very successful.

"It's been well received by the public," he said. "We get close to a 1,000 calls a year from residents or businesses."

Showalter said most calls on graffiti are quickly acted on.

"We probably clean up about 98 percent of the reports within 24 hours of notice," he said. He said that staffers clean up about 5,000 graffiti sites a year, a number that has not changed much over the past few years. "It does seem to stay steady at 5,000 a year," he said. "It hasn't decreased but it hasn't increased either and we get to the sites right away. You don't see a lot of graffiti in the city of Corona."He said areas of high visibility, like walls lining a street or drainage ditches, are the ones typically targeted by graffiti markers.

"A lot of mini-marts are targets and usually we'll have to go back to the same places quite often," he said. Kuettle said his staff works closely with the Corona Police Department and reports the graffiti to them. "It's vandalism, it's a crime," he said. "We keep track of the sites we clean and if the vandals are caught we can go back into our computer system and find out what sites they did. If the cleaning costs more than $400, they are charged with a felony." Ybarra said more people should be on the lookout for graffiti. He and Castro pass out pens, magnets and literature to residents and business owners about the program. Since they are bilingual, the men also talk to residents in English and Spanish about the 24-hour hotline offered by the program. "There's what, about 40-square miles (in the city) and only two of us," he said. "If we see walkers or jogger, we ask them to be our eyes and call us to tell us if they see anything that needs to be cleaned."Reach Nicole Buzzard at (951) 893-2107 or nbuzzard@pe.com