Support for community mural projects

Whangarei mayor Sheryl Mai supports community-driven initiatives in helping reduce tagging, such as this mural on Smeaton Dr. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Whangarei mayor Sheryl Mai believes council should "whole-heartedly" support community-driven mural projects to help reduce tagging, just as the number of tags cleaned up in the district doubled in the last month.

Latest figures from the Whangarei District Council (WDC) show that 4375 tags were removed by council contractors in the July-August month, up from 2157 tags in the June-July month. A total of 24,673 tags have been cleaned up in the seven months to August.

Whangarei deputy mayor Sharon Morgan asked councillors at the WDC planning committee this week whether they had ever considered a dedicated graffiti wall - an idea put forward by Whangarei graffiti artist Rob Allen.

WDC group manager district living Paul Dell responded that it was important to differentiate between tagging and graffiti art.

"Most of the problem stuff we see is tagging. Council has [however] been involved with murals throughout the community and it's something we are always looking at," he said.

Mayor Sheryl Mai spoke of the merits of the Smeaton Dr mural, spearheaded by Raumanga resident and Smeaton Drive Community Group member Kim Anderson and painted by the community. It has remained reasonably tag-free in the six years until now.

"It's the sort of thing that if the community comes up with something like this - we should wholeheartedly support it," Ms Mai said.

Councillor Sue Glen felt it wasn't necessarily the answer, after an Onerahi mural was tagged within 72 hours of being painted, back in 2009. "We had a beautiful mural on the wall at New World and within one week it was tagged - we wouldn't do it again," she said.

In a report provided to council, Mr Dell said the increase in tags removed could be attributed in part to the fact Northpower were now utilising the Stop Tags database, leading to a higher number of tags being reported.

Of the 4375 tags removed in the July-August month, 2824 were removed by council contractors D'Tag, 457 by the Supervised Work Programme for youth offenders and 525 tags were removed by the Community Probation Work Programme, Mr Dell said. "Kamo, Otangarei and Tikipunga are still the suburbs with the highest amount of graffiti, followed by the Whau Valley, Kensington and Raumanga suburbs."

Meanwhile, a Whangarei youth organisation is organising a youth forum looking at ways to manage graffiti, with the date to be confirmed.