Vandal victims help themselves

Hampton Park resident Derek Gardner has started cleaning graffiti off himself, after a lack of action from the City of Casey. 22828 Picture: Meagan Rogers.

By Callan Date
CASEY residents fed up with a lack of action from the city’s graffiti hotline are removing the visual vandalism themselves.
Narre Warren, Hampton Park and Cranbourne are among the suburbs worst hit by the graffiti which has been left untouched for months in some cases.
Disgruntled locals have spoken to the News amid concerns the City of Casey has slackened their original tough stance against graffiti vandals.
Signs, bridges and businesses are just some of the property within the municipality which has been damaged.
Cranbourne resident Geoff Cousins said he had been left disappointed by the lack of graffiti being removed over the past few months.
He said he took pride in his local neighbourhood and immediately reported any tags to Casey’s 1800 VANDAL hotline.
“Last year I would ring up and it was removed within a day,” he said. “Now I am waiting months and still it isn’t being cleaned up.”
Casey launched its award-winning graffiti prevention program amid great fanfare in 2002.
It still claims, in most cases, to clean up all reported graffiti within one working day.
Angela and Derek Gardner have been looking at graffiti across from their Hampton Park house for the last six months.
Despite their call to the hotline six months ago, the mess is still there.
“The mess and the graffiti makes the area look bad and it’s a big eyesore, it’s not a good advertisement for Hampton Park,” Mrs Gardner said.
The couple were optimistic about Casey’s approach to graffiti.
But when weeks waiting for the council to remove the graffiti became months, the Gardners began to doubt the effectiveness of the program.
“People have to take responsibility for their own property, but public property is the council’s responsibility.
“The council should deal with it, that’s what we’re paying them for,” Mrs Gardner said.
Casey acting manager of community safety Jem Belcher said the city had allocated $200,000 in this year’s budget for graffiti removal.
Ms Belcher said the recent introduction of new state legislation had made cleaning times on private property longer.
“Once consent is received by the City of Casey, the graffiti contractor is notified and work can then be undertaken as soon as possible,” Ms Belcher said.
“Monthly quality assurance checks are undertaken to ensure that reported cases are actioned in a timely manner and the quality of work is satisfactory.”