Confederation Heights resident Ted Mansell is fed up with seeing his neighbourhood bogged down by graffiti, and he wants the city to take action.
“I’m not seeing the priority I think it should be given when reported,” says Mansell, while showing ThoroldToday the graffiti in his neighbourhood. “I’m fighting an ongoing battle here.”
When Mansell moved to Confederation Heights a few years ago he was immediately struck by the abundance of graffiti in the neighbourhood. He thinks that Brock students are partly to blame.
“Thorold has one-third of the Brock students,” Mansell says. “I’m not suggesting all graffiti is always Brock students but there seems to be a surge of it when the school year is on.”
Throughout the years, Mansell has sent numerous complaints to city councillors and city hall staff but he feels that the issue is not dealt with sufficiently.
“I pass it day after day after day and nothing seems to be done to remove it,” he says. “I don’t think there’s much of a deterrent. What I think happens is other kids see this stuff and go: ‘Well, I’m going to do it as well.’ It invites more degradation.”
That's why Mansell wants the city to implement a 24-hour response team to deal with the issue.
“There’s a methodology to this thing if we decide to do it that way and give it immediate attention,” Mansell says. “In the long term we will deter graffiti altogether and then you don’t have to put the time and money in combating the problem.”
But the issue is not that simple. Often the graffiti does not fall under the city’s jurisdiction.
For example, if there is graffiti present on a utility box, the onus is on the utility company to clean it up
“I think this is where your policy obviously falls short,” Mansell says. “You need to have a strict approach to this thing and pass a by-law. The utility company gets notified and if they don’t conform to our 24-hour or 48-hour policy response we send a crew out there and we’ll do it and we’ll send them the bill.”
Mansell thinks the same approach should be taken to graffiti on private property. If a home owner does not clean up the graffiti right away, then the city should come and do it, adding the costs to the person’s property tax bill.
As a preventative measure Mansell suggests installing cameras.
“Given the technology today it’s not a huge undertaking to do," he says.
When reached for comment City Hall released the following statement:
"If a resident wishes to report graffiti in a public space or City-owned property, they are encouraged to use the “Report a Concern” form on the City’s website to formally file the concern. The City makes an effort to address these types of concerns in a timely manner. For instances where the graffiti is located on privately owned infrastructure such as a utility box, the City will forward the complaint to the correct entity for them to respond to accordingly."
But Mansell points out that some of the graffiti on the utility boxes has been there for months.
To promote his 24-hour response team idea, Mansell has written to every candidate in the upcoming election, in hopes of having the new city council deal with the issue once and for all.
“Every candidate that I emailed has all agreed,” he says. “Some have been more enthusiastic or committed than others but nobody has said it’s not doable. At the end of the day the community deserves to be treated properly and not have bureaucratic red tape make people have to live in this horror show.”
