By Natasha Collishaw
Centretown resident Julie Wenzel is hoping that a city bylaw set for debate by council in early May will eliminate the graffiti on some of the garage doors and mailboxes in her neighbourhood.
“I am at the point where I want to take paint and primer and go at it myself,” she said at a recent community meeting on safety in the Bank and Gilmour area organized by Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes.
The proposed bylaw would force Wenzel’s neighbours to get rid of the “mess” or face intervention by city officials.
After receiving written notification from the city, building owners would have seven days to voluntarily clean up the graffiti before a city contractor does it for them, giving them the bill.
The suggested bylaw would also see city officers searching the streets for graffiti rather than waiting for calls from concerned residents.
“This bylaw is going to be a pro-active approach rather than a reactive approach, which is typically how cities deal with bylaw issues,” says bylaw enforcement co-ordinator Craig Calder
Wenzel said graffiti is a safety issue because it reflects the reputation of a neighbourhood. Criminals are less likely to plague an area that takes pride in its surroundings, she said.
But the graffiti issue is overblown, said a local business manager after the meeting.
“When my employees are getting punched in the stomach on their way home, I’m not worrying about graffiti,” said Jonathan Hatchell, vice-president of operations of the Royal Oak pubs in Ottawa, commenting on the Centretown location.
Residents brought up other safety issues at the meeting, such as aggressive pan-handling on Bank Street, prostitutes and drug addicts creating an atmosphere of fear near the Hartman’s grocery store, and the problem of children finding drug paraphernalia in the sandboxes at some of the local schools.
Other comments related to the activities of Ottawa enforcement officials such as an alleged racial profiling incident, the recent murder at the Internet Café on Bank Street, and the deterioration of abandoned buildings such as the Somerset Hotel.
But Holmes said despite the presence of larger issues, the excessive graffiti on Bank Street is troubling for many Centretown residents.
Centretown is second only to the Rideau-Vanier Ward in terms of its number of complaints about poor property standards and noise.
In 2006, 741 residents in Centretown complained to bylaw officers about property standard issues; graffiti led the list.
It is important to deal swiftly with this issue, or else it will become unmanageable, Holmes said in an interview after the meeting.
“This bylaw is important because if you leave the graffiti then it looks like no one cares, and then others come and tag and soon the area is plastered,” she explained.
The city needs to put the onus on residents and businesses to clean up graffiti because police have a difficult time catching vandals in the act, she said.
“So far the police have had little success in finding these young people and putting a stop to this.”
The bylaw is part of a report put together by various divisions of city hall after investigating the policies of such cities as Toronto and Montreal.
But Wenzel said that graffiti is only the symptom of a larger problem–the lack of co-operation between neighbours.
She said since her neighbours started an e-mail system to alert each other to possible dangers in the community, she feels more secure.
Centretown resident Jessica Harrington agreed that neighbours need to come together more often, but said the scope of the problem is much larger.
“I see people shooting up in front of my door and people dealing drugs,” she told the crowd. “I have actually been mistaken for a prostitute a couple of times,” she added, noting that she usually dresses modestly. “But although we need more police, what we really need is a vision for our community.”
She said after the meeting this vision would entail a change in the way Centretown residents view prostitutes and drug addicts. Rather than hurrying past them as if they were invisible, they should instead see them as people.
Ottawa Police Services, the Bank Street Business Improvement Area and Ottawa Community Housing were among the organizations represented at the meeting.