To tag or not to tag

All the signs Toronto's graffiti problem has reached epidemic proportions can be found in 55 Division, where police this week arrested a 15-year-old with a paint marker and a bunch of stickers bearing his handle "trace," which were also found on an electrical box in Woodbine Park. A senior's residence in the east-end district has also spent $60,000 in the past two years scrubbing off graffiti from their premises.

"I'm sure they could have found better ways to use that money," said Constable Robert McDonald, who will host a community meeting at the Main Square Recreation Centre this Tuesday to discuss the issue and possible solutions. "Graffiti is not a victimless crime."

City Hall is on the verge of getting tough to eradicate this pernicious blight on Toronto's urban (and suburban) landscape with an arsenal of both sticks and carrots. Councillor Howard Moscoe (Eglinton-Lawrence), chairman of the licensing and standards committee, will today unveil details of a pilot project that will require city boards, commissions and agencies, as well as private utilities and service providers, to remove graffiti from their installations within 72 hours or pay the tab for the city to do it.

"It's pretty tough to justify going after graffiti on private property when the city doesn't clean up its own property," he said of the pioneering plan that will be expanded city-wide and to private landholders if successful. Meanwhile, city council is likely to approve $340,000 to extend a 12-year-old program that pays at-risk youth to paint artistic graffiti murals in places prone to vandalism and scrub away illegal tagging.

Another program that has drawn recent fire is free graffiti art classes for teenagers being run at two community recreation centres. A third course is being offered to six-to nine-year-olds at a cost of $28 for nine weeks. Skeptics are questioning whether this double-barrelled approach is complimenting or working at cross purposes with the goal of rubbing out rampant graffiti.

"I think it sends a bad message.… We're spending money on teaching kids graffiti that we could have spent on more enforcement officers to clean up the city," said Denzil Min-nan-Wong (Don Valley East), a member of the licensing and standards committee. "I think you have to invest in cleaning up the graffiti first."

But those who offer youth a formal outlet for their artistic impulses defend the programs as essential to efforts to curb graffiti because of their educational component. Brenda Librecz, general manager of parks, forestry and recreation for the city, said the "graffiti" classes at the Ancaster and Fairbanks community centres -- derided as "wacko" by one councillor --are absolutely not promoting vandalism or the tagging of public spaces.

Rather, Ms. Librecz said, they are art classes that teach respect for public spaces and involve input from local police detachments. Calling it a graffiti class, however, draws in youths who might not otherwise participate and opens up a new world of art to them with results she called "moving."

The idea behind paying children to do murals is that they cover over potential blank walls that invite vandalism with an appealing art project, said Bryon Gray, who could receive $17,000 from the city to fund such a program at the Jane/ Finch Community and Family Centre for a fourth summer. This deters future vandalism, he said, because taggers tend to abide by an unwritten code that frowns upon scrawling on the work of others. "Those areas that have now been painted over, they've never been touched," Mr. Gray said. "No one's even come and put a moustache on one of the faces."

Sue Kaiser, who manages the entire $340,000 program for the city, said the murals eliminate "opportunities" for graffiti, although there have been some incidents of the projects themselves being vandalized. While the program has positive effects, she said it is not realistic to expect the program solve an intractable problem on its own.