Delridge Skatepark graffiti gone – after 5 months

The bowls at Delridge Skatepark are graffiti-free today – 5 months after nearby resident Nancy Folsom first started reporting the vandalism, which she said started small but then kept spreading. Today she contacted the city again and CC’d us, so we went over for a look – and found a crew in the process of cleaning it up.

Folsom says she’s reported graffiti vandalism at other public parks in the area and has seen it cleaned up much quicker. One response she got about the just-cleaned-up skatepark situation included an apology and, “We try hard to remove graffiti 72 hrs from the time it is reported. Unfortunately we only have 2 individuals doing graffiti removal for the 485 parks that we have in the city.” The city has a goal of cleaning up graffiti on public property within 10 days, as noted on the page you can use to file a report.

NRV November 18, 2019 (4:39 pm)

Thank you for following up on this. I had reported this many times through the “Find it – Fix it” app with no luck.

nf November 19, 2019 (9:27 am)

I appreciate hearing others have reported it (which I assume). I’ve asked time and again that they resolve the problem of reports being ignored til we bug a Dept. of Neighborhoods employee.

nf November 19, 2019 (9:32 am)

Ten days. Bwhahahahaha. The only time that happens is if they get a report from a city employee. Regular maintenance crews are out working all around the skate park, weekly, and doing a great job, by the way. Emptying trash, mowing, etc, so Parks knows it’s there. The problem is that all that lovely smooth concrete is very attractive to graffiti artists, and if it’s left, it just encourages more. It get so bad that there is spill over, including graffiti on the trees! Some of which says “I (heart) my children.” Which is amusing.

ETA: Maybe we need to figure out why there are only two employees doing this job if the problem is backlog. Is there some way we can help Parks get what they need to increase the personnel?

Alex S. November 19, 2019 (10:53 am)

One or two years ago. the Find it Fix it app seemed to work pretty well for reporting graffiti. In recent months, its hard to tell whether the city is paying any attention to citizen reporting at all. Even WSDOT, with their billion dollar maintenance budgets, seems fine with leaving large, ugly stains of tagging and graffiti all over their facilities. The adolescent loser boys who do all this vandalism have plenty of outlets and opportunities for self-expression in Seattle: they just choose the laziest, most destructive path. And a lot of it stems from Instagram, which helps feed a pathetic need for attention from their peers that they didn’t receive from daddy.

WSB November 19, 2019 (11:11 am)

We’ve got a test of sorts running – I finally filed an online report last week about a much-tagged piece of infrastructure not far from HQ. “You can expect the reported graffiti to be removed within 10 business days,” said the automated reply … we’ll see!

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