By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
IN A bold move by the City of Casey to help combat the work of street vandals, signs will be erected over graffiti ridden VicRoads property, encouraging motorists to make a complaint call to get Casey streets cleaned up.
As it stands the Casey Council cannot remove graffiti on VicRoads infrastructure, something Casey councillors have been trying to rectify for more than a year, Mayor Sam Aziz told Star News.
The frustrated mayor said: “The Monash Freeway and the Hallam Bypass, which is the gateway to our city, looks like downtown New York in the 1970s”.
“And here we are working hard to build beautiful neighbourhoods and VicRoads don’t want to lift a finger, even though it’s their responsibility – we won’t stop until it gets fixed,” he said.
When alerted to graffiti on council or private property, the City of Casey’s policy is to remove it within 24 hours.
“If you drive around, Casey property is graffiti free, and we expect nothing less,” Cr Aziz said.
But VicRoads will only remove graffiti that’s considered to be racist, offensive or has road safety implications when practical to do so and leave other forms of graffiti until they see fit to remove it.
But according to graffiti removal advocate, Cr Wayne Smith, VicRoads has never deemed Casey’s vandal hotspots bad enough to clean up.
“I can’t recall sound walls (VicRoads property) in Casey ever having graffiti removed,” Cr Smith said.
“Every sound wall that goes along the Monash Freeway through Casey is vandalised and are getting worse, they just keep adding to it.”
Acting Metro South East regional director at VicRoads Vince Punaro said graffiti which was deemed offensive got “prioritised depending on its size and location on the road network, against other maintenance activities”.
Putting the blame back onto VicRoads, Cr Aziz said motorists could expect to see signs which say something along the lines of, “VicRoads/VicTracks is responsible for cleaning this graffiti, please contact them, here’s the number”.
The signs will be erected a part of the City of Casey’s ongoing campaign to wash Casey clean of vandals.
“The signs will go up wherever there’s graffiti on property we can’t clean and we have an extensive Facebook following so the message will be put out through our social media channels as well,” Cr Aziz said.
Last financial year, VicRoads allocated $200,000 for graffiti removal in the Metropolitan South East region but Cr Aziz said the problem in Casey was not going away and wouldn’t, unless authorities were quick to act.
“You have to remove graffiti straight away and keep removing it, to give vandals less incentive,” Cr Aziz said.
The City of Casey removed more than 33,743 square metres of graffiti from the streets from July 2014 to September 2015 at a cost of $334,000.
The item of ‘graffiti removal advocacy’ was brought up as urgent business at a Casey Council meeting on Tuesday 19 January.
The signs will play one role in the council’s graffiti removal campaign which includes putting continued pressure on the State Government to rid freeway noise walls and railway bridges of vandalism.
Residents with information on vandals can contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, a part of the State Governments ‘Dob in a Tagger’ graffiti initiative.
