Article: Bus shelters up for 'adoption'

[ozbob]

From The West Australian click here!

Bus shelters up for 'adoption'

Bus shelters up for 'adoption'
Beatrice Thomas and Kent Acott, The West Australian Updated November 5, 2011, 2:25 am

Local councils are offering do-it-yourself graffiti removal kits and asking residents to "adopt" bus shelters to clean as they try to rein in almost 44,000 attacks each year.

The cost of graffiti was $3.63 million for 18 metropolitan councils last financial year and detailed logs for 14 of them show the rate of incidents was about 120 a day.

The Public Transport Authority said it set aside $3 million in 2010-11 to tackle graffiti on trains, buses and at stations.

The cities of Cockburn and Stirling and towns of Cambridge and Kwinana have all offered residents and businesses the removal kits at no charge.

Cockburn community services director Don Green said more than 3500 kits were distributed since 2009 in addition to the council's graffiti removal service.

A City of Gosnells spokeswoman said its award-winning graffiti program "empowered" residents and businesses to assist graffiti prevention by reporting incidents, restricting sales of graffiti implements and "adopting" bus shelters.

To date, 67 out of 110 shelters in the city were maintained by residents, who were given a four-litre tin of paint, bucket, paint brush, disposable gloves, face mask and wet paint signs.

Most councils said they offered graffiti removal within two to three days and many had urban art schemes and juvenile justice programs under which young offenders had to clean up graffiti.

The cities of Swan, Perth and Stirling had the biggest annual costs at about $500,000 each.

Stirling mayor David Boothman said this was small compared with $900,000 two years ago but was still far too much and would be better used on much-needed services.

PTA spokesman David Hynes said its Operation Cleanskin to spot new incidents quickly, identify offenders and pass details to police resulted in 165 people being charged with 259 offences of graffiti on buses and trains in 2011.

"In many instances we can hand full details to the police," he said.

"Where the offender is unknown, the media, especially _The West Australian _, has helped by publishing photographs with a success rate close to 100 per cent."