Boise Makes Graffiti Vanish

How did Boise become the graffiti-free city?

Scrub, scrub, scrub.

It’s not that no one ever paints graffiti here. But look around, and you won’t see any.

That’s the way city officials want it. They’ve taken steps to keep it that way.

Their main weapon is the Mayor’s Graffiti Hotline, which gets one to two calls a day reporting graffiti.

Mayor’s office staffers figure out which public agency or private owner is responsible for the property that’s been hit. Police officers quickly go out and photograph the scrawls, and then the property owners clean them off or paint them over, pronto.

“That has kind of a dampening effect on graffiti artists, if you remove it right away,” said Suzanne Burton, Mayor Brent Coles’ spokeswoman.

Boise got worried about graffiti a couple of years ago. When the city researched the issue, it found that some other towns were going with get-tough, anti-graffiti ordinances that required property owners to remove the stuff right away. If they didn’t, the city would remove the graffiti and charge the owner.

The voluntary cleanup with the hotline to prompt it suits Boise better, Burton said.

Best of all, it seems to be working.

“Last year, some graffiti had shown up on a shopping center up on Fairview, and I had a reporter from one of the TV stations call me. He said, ‘We’re trying to go out and shoot graffiti, but we can’t find any. Do you know where any is?’

“That’s the kind of problem we’d rather have.”

Drinkin’ in the park

A transient with several dirty duffle bags sprawls on the lawn next to his bicycle, sipping from a bottle in a paper bag.

A mile away, a couple is having a romantic picnic in the park. Two plastic stemmed glasses propped on their picnic basket hold their chardonnay.

While most public parks in North Idaho don’t allow alcohol, Boise’s expansive city parks always have.

“A lot of good citizens like to have a beer with a picnic or a drink of wine,” said Tom Governale, a superintendent for the city’s Parks and Rec department. “It’s been something embedded in the culture here.”

Many parks problems are alcohol-related, Governale said. But rather than ban booze, he said, “We’re working on problem areas and education.”

The city limits park drinking to beer and wine, and has banned alcohol from a few areas. One is the bandshell in tree-shaded, river-hugging Julia Davis Park. It’s a frequent concert site that often draws young crowds. Another is at a neighborhood “tot lot” that was drawing undesirable crowds of drinkers.

Another ban is along a section of the city’s riverside Greenbelt that’s near a liquor store. Transients were “buying their liquor, meandering down to the closest bench on the Greenbelt,” and then getting drunk and harassing the skaters, cyclists and runners who passed by on the path.

The no-alcohol areas have “worked very well,” Governale said.

Boise also requires permits for anyone bringing more than three cases of beer to the park. Typically, holders of such permits are company picnics and family reunions.

Boise Police Lt. Tim Rosenvall said city leaders here have never favored a ban on drinking in parks. “The police perspective is that would certainly help minimize the problems we have to deal with as police officers,” he said.

But, Governale noted, “A lot of good, upstanding citizens would be offended by that. It’s a way of life and culture here, and it’s hard to take that away.”

North-South Notes runs every other Sunday. To reach Betsy Z. Russell, call (208) 336-2854 or FAX to (208) 336-0021.

, DataTimes