A realtor who once kept brake cleaner on hand to clean mustaches and devil horns off his bench advertisements represents a growing headache for Edmonton and local businesses: graffiti vandalism.
According to the City of Edmonton, graffiti complaints to 311 numbered 919 in the first four months of 2018. In the first four months of this year, the city has received 1,918 complaints.
Realtor Jay Love, whose public ads are a frequent graffiti target, used to take the vandalism personally.
“We've had one (bench), they actually destroyed it,” Love told CTV News. “It's unusable, so that one's actually taken out of commission.”
After some 100 instances of vandalism over 13 years, he stopped counting how many tags he removed.
Most recently, he and sister, realtor Shari Love, took a new approach. They left one side of their bench ad blank except for a message: “Graffiti here.”
“We were kind of extending an olive branch and hoping maybe they would work with us but it was short lived,” Love explained.
Within days, their names and pictures had been defaced.
Although reports of graffiti vandalism has doubled across the city, the Whyte Avenue area has been “exceptionally” hard hit by vandals who are likely to leave their mark in a more visible place, said Don Belanger, program manager of Capital City Clean Up.
“Before, the graffiti was basically kept to back alleys and high points of buildings… but now you’re seeing them basically blatantly apply tags and vandalism right on the fronts of storefronts,” Belanger explained.
“It’s creating a lot of frustration for the private property owners and we fully understand that. The City is a property owner as well, and we’re just as impacted by the tagging—we have to clean it up.”
Belanger said two City of Edmonton crews were cleaning an average of 29 city-owned assets of graffiti per day. Capital City Clean Up is working on better strategies to address the increase in crimes.
In Edmonton, businesses and homeowners are responsible for removing graffiti and can be fined $250 for neglecting it.
While Love wants stricter penalties for those caught, Ward 8 Councillor Ben Henderson plans to make a motion at Tuesday’s city council meeting to restrict the sale of spray paint canisters—an idea he credits to a local merchant.
“It feels a bit draconian,” Henderson said, but added, “what we're doing right now all of sudden feels like a losing battle again.”
It’s unclear what such a restriction would look like, but Henderson is firm the city needs to take action.
Love isn’t confident in the idea—as many of the vandals who target his ads do so with markers, not spray paint—but said he could only keep doing what he always has: “You can't give up trying.”
With files from Dan Grummett
