NORTH BATTLEFORD — City council in North Battleford received some further details from administration at Monday’s meeting on a proposed graffiti cover-up program.
The program had been proposed by Canadian Mental Health Association - Battlefords Branch to address graffiti problems in the city.
In response to a council request for more information on how to implement it, Director of Protective Services/Fire Chief Lindsay Holm provided a memo outlining how the program would work. At council he said it “will be an effective program and we should be able to achieve some success with covering up some graffiti."
It would be similar to a program implemented in 2015, but that was tied more to actual graffiti removal, which Holm said was probably why it ended up stopping.
This new program would be to cover up graffiti only, and Holm said it should be easy to implement, as Community Safety Officers are already out doing yard orders.
The graffiti program would receive data collected by Citizens on Patrol, which logs and takes photos of locations with graffiti. That information is then forwarded to the RCMP and CSOs.
Administration is asking that the CMHA’s contact information be provided to the property owners to arrange to have the graffiti covered up, to allow the coverup of the graffiti with the property owner’s permission. The city’s Protective Services Department will be able to supply paint and rollers and brushes to facilitate the coverup, with the cost to be absorbed by the budget. Completion of the coverup would then be reported by CMHA to the CSO department.
There is money available under the Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design funding, and so there would be no costs to taxpayers.
Council passed a resolution to move forward with the graffiti coverup initiative, and for administration to bring back a report showing how successful it was at the end of the season.
