MARYSVILLE — Someone spray-painted graffiti on signs for an interactive course in Jennings Nature Park last weekend, destroying that feature of the park.
The taggers also hit play equipment near the 64th Street NE entrance to the meandering park. The vandalism is believed to have taken place Saturday afternoon, parks officials said.
City parks director Jim Ballew estimated the cost of cleaning up the graffiti and replacing the signs at about $2,000. Benches and play equipment at Jennings Park have been hit hard this year.
“It’s become a haven for undesirable activity,” he said.
The 10 signs were donated by the United Way and feature exercises from bornlearning.org, designed for parents to help young children learn from their environment. It’s uncertain whether they’ll be replaced.
Two of the signs were destroyed, six damaged and two weren’t touched, parks maintenance superintendent Mike Robinson said.
With these signs, “unfortunately, you remove the graffiti, you remove the print,” he said.
The incident led to a renewed call from City Councilman Jeff Vaughan to step up the battle against graffiti.
“I want to see some real action on graffiti this year,” Vaughan said at a meeting Monday after Ballew told the council about the incident.
Almost a year ago, the City Council passed a law requiring anyone who finds graffiti on their property to clean it up within 48 hours. If it’s not cleaned up, the city can issue a notice requiring its removal within the next 48 hours. Before, the time limit was 30 days. Many studies have found that quickly removing graffiti can discourage it, city officials say.
Overall, the law has worked well, Vaughan said. It was designed to raise awareness of the problem among merchants, and it’s done so, he believes. “The problem with graffiti is it goes in spurts,” he said.
It’s also happened a lot in city parks. The city spent an estimated $12,000 cleaning up after graffiti and other vandalism last year. That’s up from $8,000 in 2006.
Much of the graffiti has occurred in a corridor that stretches from Totem Middle School in downtown to Marysville Middle School, Jennings Park and the Marysville Family YMCA, Ballew said.
He said the city plans to add more than $6,000 worth of cameras and lights at Jennings Park and Ebey Waterfront Park in the coming months.
That will help, but it’s not enough, Vaughn said.
“We need people who live around (Jennings Park) and people who frequent the park to be vigilant,” he said. “It’s a multi-faceted problem, and we’ve got to attack it in a lot of different ways.”
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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