Grousing about graffiti gets council's attention
By Rob O'Dell
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.12.2006
advertisementResident concerns of a growing graffiti scourge tagging Tucson's neighborhoods, and questions about the city's response, will put the code enforcement department under a City Council microscope today.
Councilwoman Karin Uhlich asked the council to discuss the Neighborhood Services Department because of concerns about the response times for cleaning up graffiti — along with other code enforcement issues such as inspections and the boarding up of abandoned properties.
"There's just a long, long lag time" between calls for enforcement and action, Uhlich said. "I want to figure out what the barriers are for being more responsive."
Uhlich said the complaints about code enforcement, especially on graffiti and the boarding up of abandoned homes, began increasing this summer. She said other council members having expressed concerns about graffiti and that code enforcement was part of her reason for bringing it before the council.
The concerns about graffiti and code enforcement come on the heels of big changes at the Neighborhood Services Department.
In July, the city dropped the operator that had cleaned up graffiti in Tucson since 1998, and took over the graffiti abatement program itself. The city was swamped with more calls than it expected and a backlog of calls quickly built up, leaving graffiti languishing on block walls and light posts and generating upset phone calls to council offices.
Uhlich said the old program seemed to be working well. She said she wanted to ensure the new contractor — Graffiti Protective Coatings out of Long Beach, Calif. — understands the expectation for graffiti abatement is as quick a turnaround for cleanup as possible.
"It just concerns me," Uhlich said. "I don't want to let these things slide. Neighborhood quality of life is something that could evaporate very quickly."
Eliseo Garza, the Neighborhood Resources director, said the new contractor should be in place by Friday.
He said the company, which won a city bidding process, is different from any the city has had. He said it has a proprietary system for removing graffiti, would divide the city into zones and have a 24-hour response goal, which he said it has met elsewhere.
After Garza became the department's director, he changed the department's system from one where inspectors were split by duties — inspectors who only handled weeds, electrical issues or signs, for example — to a system were everyone is cross-trained to enforce the code on every issue.
Garza said the new system is more comprehensive, and "it's saving us having to send more than one inspector to a site." Garza said the department has gotten behind because inspectors have had to go through an intensive training program in the midst of a spike in calls.
Glen Parin, the acting president of the South Harrison Neighborhood Association on the East Side, said he was concerned about the role of the new contractor because with graffiti in his neighborhood, "there's always something for me to do."
Parin said his neighborhood isn't as bad as some, but graffiti has "been a pet peeve of mine for 15 years."
● Contact reporter Rob O'Dell at 573-4240 or rodell@azstarnet.com.