WINNIPEG
Taking on taggers
City staff will be spending the next few months preparing suggestions for a graffiti removal strategy that could include everything from giving the city the authority to remove graffiti from private property to getting scofflaws to clean it up themselves.
Winnipeg's protection and community services committee voted yesterday to give city bureaucrats until September to come up with a wide-ranging strategy for the innovative enforcement of anti-graffiti laws. "There's a huge sense in the community that we're powerless to do anything about this and we don't enforce it," said St. Vital Coun. Gord Steeves, who introduced the motion that led to the vote.
Among the things city staff will be looking at are whether any bylaw should give the city the power to remove graffiti without a property owner's consent, what role utilities like Canada Post and MTS should play in removing tags from items like mail boxes and telephone poles, and what can be done to ramp up efforts to ensure people convicted of graffiti-related offences and other minor property crimes perform some of the clean-up.
That would not only beautify the city, it would also perform a rehabilitative service for the offender, Steeves suggested. "They can use a little elbow grease to pay off a relatively modest debt to society, and in return the graffiti gets removed," he said.
A spokeswoman for Manitoba Justice said there are already measures in place to ensure the system has the flexibility to order those kinds of sentences in some cases. Police can divert offenders to community service before they even enter the court system, while the Manitoba Youth Centre runs a program called Off the Wall where offenders clean graffiti, although that only applies to public property, she said.
Point Douglas Coun. Mike Pagtakhan said he hoped the city's report will consider the portion of the population that considers graffiti art and offer ways to practice that art form without damaging property.
The city has slated more than $925,000 for graffiti removal in this year's budget.
Paul Turenne
12 May 2009
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/winnipeg/2009/05/12/9430576-sun.html
