Cost of graffiti cleanup

YOU ASKED: What is the cost of the headman and staff of the Graffiti Task Force? The graffiti seems to be more prevalent than ever, even showing up in residential areas.

— Anonymous

OUR ANSWER: The task force is a not-for-profit society registered with the Society’s Act of B.C. and, as such, all of its finances are public information.

Now, that means a couple of things.

First, anyone can walk into the Graffiti Task Force headquarters at 6 Seymour St. W. and ask to see the financial records. Those documents would show everything from the amount of funding the task force receives to the amount of money it spends on supplies to clean all that graffiti around town.

Second, anyone willing to pay a fee of $10.50 per document can get photocopies of financial records from the BC Registries office in Victoria.

We decided to go for a variation of the first option by calling the task force’s headman, Gord Giles, and putting your question to him.

Giles runs the operation with a crew of two, and the total salary payout is roughly $100,000 annually — not a lot when you consider the amount of work the trio does.

Last year, the task force scrubbed or painted over 123,000 square feet of graffiti-tagged City property. To try to comprehend that size, think of three to four football fields.

As for its funding, the City paid $130,000 in grants to help cover the wages and supplies of the task force. (The task force is charged primarily with removing graffiti on City property).

Cleaning City property, as well as graffiti-tagged railcars and Telus property took up most of the crew’s time, so Giles agrees with the statement that graffiti seems to be more prevalent than ever in Kamloops.

“I’ll tell you why there seems to be more graffiti out there,” he said. “It’s because there is more.”

But since the graffiti task force is so busy cleaning the contracted properties, the crew hasn’t had time to hire themselves out for private cleanups.

And that probably accounts for the graffiti you’re seeing on fences, garages and other private surfaces in your neighbourhood.

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