MEDIA RELEASE
Ruapehu District Council

Date: Thursday 30 May 2013

Youth Leader Disappointed with New Graffiti Vandalisim

The recent good work of Taumarunui High School students cleaning-up graffiti ‘hot spots’ as part of the Youth Action Plan for Taumarunui has already been undone by new vandalism.

In April year nine and ten students helped to clean-up graffiti vandalised sites at the Seath Avenue Reserve and at the Victory and Manunui bridges as part of an initiative between the Taumarunui Social Sector Trials (SST) and Ruapehu District Council (RDC).

SST Youth Activities Coordinator, Zacchaeus Clarke, who helped organise the ‘paint out’ of the graffiti hot spots said that it was really disappointing that the great efforts made by the local students to beautify these sites have been re-vandalised so quickly.

“The kids did an amazing job and it had made a real difference to the way these graffiti vandalised sites which are on public walkways or recreational areas looked.”

“Unfortunately there is a minority in our community who for whatever reason don’t have pride in themselves or our town and do this sort of thing,” he said.

Mr Clarke said that despite the re-tagging of the sites the original ‘paint out’ effort was well worth it and would be worth doing again.

“The ‘paint out’ was an excellent way for the kids who took part to contribute and develop pride in being part of the community.”

“It’s really important that the majority who do have pride in Taumarunui continue to ‘step up’ and make an effort to keep our town clean and safe.”

“The key to getting on top of issues like graffiti is through a combined community effort.”

“For many people graffiti suggests that a town or area is in decline which is not an image Taumarunui needs,” he said.

RDC Community Property Team Leader, Rebecca Van Orden, said that Council was very concerned about the on-going graffiti issue.

“Although it is typically a “low nuisance level” in Ruapehu it is very costly to ratepayers and can contribute to a sense of community unease,” she said.

“As part of our commitment to the ‘Zero Tolerance for Graffiti Vandalism Strategy’ signed between council, the Police and other stakeholders we make an effort to paint over any graffiti on council property as soon as possible.”

“In some real ‘hot spot’ areas like the rail underpass this can mean painting out new graffiti every other week or more.”

Mrs Van Orden added that private property owners can contact council and be given free grey paint courtesy of Resene Paints for quickly painting graffiti until a proper ‘colour match’ repair can be done.

“Council strongly recommends that victims of graffiti vandalism take advantage of the free paint offer as we know that painting it over quickly is an effective deterrent to further tagging.”

“Anyone needing to take advantage of the free paint offer just needs to contact their local council office.”

ENDS

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