Taxpayers spend a bundle on graffiti cleanup in Snohomish County

EVERETT — Sometimes the damage is silly. On Monday it was offensive.

Ken Heiner of Everett’s traffic engineering department spent part of his morning replacing a stop sign in a north Everett neighborhood. A swastika was painted on the sign.

That symbol doesn’t show up often, Heiner said, but plenty of swear words, gang tags and even stickers of all kinds do.

“I’ve been dealing with this for years, and it’s getting worse,” he said. “I don’t need this kind of job security. Graffiti is destructive, unnecessary and costly to the taxpayers.”

Cities, the county and the state spend thousands every year and waste countless hours getting rid of graffiti or replacing signs too damaged to restore. The problem is only getting more widespread.

Heiner and other sign crew members maintain about 26,000 signs in the city. Heiner figures he spends the equivalent of four hours a week just dealing with graffiti. The city’s policy is to remove offensive damage as soon as possible, he said.

“Every day we’re doing some kind of graffiti-related job,” Heiner said. “It’s disgusting.”

The city of Everett annually budgets about $25,000 to take care of damage to traffic signs, light poles and other traffic-control structures, spokeswoman Kate Reardon said. Some of that money goes to replace signs knocked over in traffic accidents, for example, but much of it cleans up graffiti, she said.

It’s less of a problem for county government. Every county department spends money on graffiti removal, but the public works and parks departments handle the brunt of it.

Last year, Snohomish County’s public works department spent $1,960 cleaning up graffiti on traffic signs, spokesman Christopher Schwarzen said.

In addition, county park rangers spent 124 hours last year cleaning or removing graffiti, at a cost of more than $3,300, he said.

Often the traffic signs are destroyed by the solvents in the spray paint used to tag the sign. Or the signs have to be replaced because the paint remover used to clean graffiti off signs ends up melting the face of the sign and damaging the reflective backing. By then the signs are out of conformance with federal standards, Schwarzen said.

“This year we are noticing an uptick in graffiti throughout the county,” Schwarzen said. “Especially in gang-related tagging.”

The state also deals with graffiti on state highways and I-5.

To clean up the back side of a graffiti-tagged sign on U.S. 2, the state probably will spend about $3,000, said Rob Morton, the state Department of Transportation maintenance and operations supervisor in Everett.

The large, overhead sign directs westbound traffic on U.S. 2, and its rear side can be seen from I-5. Had the tag been on the front of the sign, the cost would have risen to about $4,500, he said.

“We’ll have to stop traffic, close off lanes, get a night crew out to do the work and put them up in a bucket to wash the sign off,” Morton said. “It’s extremely costly.”

State crews must clean up or replace an average of about two large signs a month on the freeway and state highways in the county, he said.

People who see graffiti can help by reporting it or by volunteering to get rid of it.

The county hosts its annual “Graffiti Paint Out” day in the fall, inviting people to help remove graffiti from public and private locations. Last year, county staff and volunteers removed graffiti from a stretch of railroad property north of Everett Station and the year before the graffiti removal day was along a stretch of the Centennial Trail, Schwarzen said.

While cleaning up tagging on private property is the owner’s responsibility, the city of Everett has a pilot project ongoing that helps homeowners get graffiti on their properties cleaned up quickly, Reardon said.

From November to May, at a cost of about $10,000 to taxpayers, there were 110 graffiti cleanup projects at residences throughout the city, she said.

The city’s graffiti hotline number, 425-257-8748, is the one to call to report residential or public tags, Reardon said.

“Our goal is to maintain quality neighborhoods,” Reardon said. “Swift removal is what it takes to discourage additional tagging.”

Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427, gfiege@heraldnet.com.