Department of Housing artwork

I don't think this is an officially sponsored Departmental artwork in the stairwell of this housing complex.

Someone needs to have the expression "Don't poop in your nest" explained to them.

Breaking the cycle

This post is for a friend of mine who works in Police HQ, who I will codename "we have more important things to worry about".

I can appreciate the Police perspective - when you have murderous bikie gangs and drug shoot outs to deal with, graffiti looks pretty insignificant by comparison.  However, not all Police are spending 100% of their time chasing killer bikies and arresting drug dealers - and given that over 100,000 malicious damage offenses are reporting in NSW each year, you'd think some resources could be spared to look into the problem.  

Maybe our problem is that too many good citizens are reporting malicious damage and vandalism and graffiti, and the numbers are just so huge, the Police find them overwhelming and don't know where to start?  Would it be better if we encouraged people not to report vandalism?  If there were only say 1,000 incidents per year across the entire state of malicious damage, would the Police feel less helpless and overwhelmed and feel they could make a difference by properly investigating and following up each incident?

I think not.

The feedback that I got from "we have more important things to worry about" is that the Police believe that based on the number of reports of graffiti, the public just isn't that concerned about it - so they aren't going to devote much resourcing to it.

They have a point.  As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.  In this case, the Police are not hearing any squeaks from the public.  I find that interesting, given that the government recently introduced new laws regarding graffiti and marker pens - obviously, our MPs are hearing plenty of squeaking.  Why else would they toughen up the existing laws if there was no reason to do so?  There seems to be a major disconnect here between what the government wants and what the Police are doing.  I will leave that to the Police Minister to sort out.

This is the situation we find ourselves in now:

Somewhere in each Police station, there is probably someone running reports on a regular basis on the crime statistics for their area, and these statistics will be pored over by the management team for that area.  If they see a flare up in reports of a particular crime (like bag snatching in a shopping mall for instance), they might setup a temporary task force to tackle it.  Their decisions will be driven by the numbers.  The crimes with the worst numbers or worst trends get the resources - bad numbers are squeaky wheels, Police numbers are the oil.

At present, the Police are not seeing bad numbers when it comes to graffiti, so they aren't devoting any manpower to the problem.  Because businesses (and citizens) aren't seeing any efforts being made by the Police, they don't bother reporting graffiti - they just clean it up and move on, only reporting it if they are making an insurance claim.  This means the Police aren't seeing bad numbers, and around we go again.

It's like the chicken and the egg.  Police won't devote resources unless people report graffiti, and people won't bother to report graffiti unless they believe the Police will bother to action their reports.

This is why I have spent the last 9 months or so trying to encourage people around my area to up the reporting rate.  I don't believe the rate of graffiti application has changed at all - vandals are still spraying it up at the same rate they were before.  What we should be doing though is reporting as many instances of new vandalism as possible.  

Let's assume 100 tags are sprayed per week, and this has been constant for years.  Until now, only 5% might have been reported - those that Council removed.  Police look at the desultory number of reports, and decide it's not worth any action.

But what if we lift the reporting rate to 50%?  Suddenly the numbers jump from 20 reports per month to 200 - a massive increase.  That is going to gain the attention of Police management in a big way, and it will attract resources as a result.

Apart from that, the major benefit from reporting is the impact it can have on a prosecution.  Let's assume a vandal applies 10 tags per week over a year - 500 tags say.  Let's also assume that because of laziness or inertia or bad policy, none are reported.  Then the Police arrest this vandal when they catch them applying tag 501.  How many instances of graffiti will they charge him with?

One.

What is the judge going to do?  

Slap them lightly on the wrist.

What would the judge do if they were charged with 501 separate instances committed over a 12 month period?

Well, some may still slap them lightly on the wrist, but the odd judge might lock them up, and it is less likely that the sentence would be reduced on appeal with a string of offenses like that.

I have started the process of chasing up the major state government utilities to see whether they are reporting graffiti that is scrawled on their assets - the likes of Energy Australia, the RTA and Sydney Water - and the Police!  I haven't had a response yet, but I may have the chance to get some answers next week.  Our local Police command has re-established two community safety precinct committees (CSPC) and they're holding a meeting from 9am to 11.30am on Wed April 8 at Club Five Dock.  I'm going to try and attend, and I'll be asking questions about whether government agencies are bothering to report damage to their assets.

Hopeless design

I joined BayBUG (Canada Bay Bicycle User Group) for a portion of their ride to Cronulla this morning down the Cooks River cycleway.  Part of the cycleway around Campsie is in the process of being ripped up and replaced by the Council with a wider, smoother path - and that required us to divert into the back streets of Campsie.

Part and parcel of being a cyclist in Sydney is being discriminated against.  If a diversion is setup for cars, signs will be setup at every intersection telling drivers where to go in order to follow the diversion to the very end.  Cyclists are treated differently.  If you are lucky, whoever is doing the roadworks will put up a single sign telling you to divert elsewhere, and that will be it.  They don't bother thinking through where the cyclists actually have to go to divert around the roadworks, expecting them to figure it out for themselves.

Which is what the ride leaders did.  That involved a lot of consulting of maps, a bit of guesswork and the occasional foray into the unknown to see if a certain road or path would get us to where we wanted to go.

The first part of the diversion took us up a path at the end of Lindsay St in Campsie.  Council has put in barriers at each end of the path to stop motorcyclists from using the path.  However, they've built the barriers in such a way that it was nearly impossible for even the thinnest of us to squeeze through.  Bikes certainly couldn't get through the gap - they all had to be lifted over the barriers, which is a pretty silly design for a bike path.  

Prams and pregnant women would be utterly unable to negotiate this path - this photo shows the far end, where the barriers were wide enough to man-handle a bike through - just.

Birthday grubs

There is a nice picnic spot on the water at Wareemba that is a favourite hangout for those that love to eat fast food and make a mess.  Here are the results from Friday night.  By counting chip packets, burger boxes and drinks, I'd say it consisted of 3-4 people.

Since the rubbish left on the ground included two packets of sparklers, we can also assume that it was a birthday party for a kid.  What a great example to set for the next generation.

Only two packets of cigarettes discarded this time around.

This photo shows the distance to the closest bin.  It is 1.3km to McDonalds, and 6 metres to the bin.  Whoever left this mess behind was able to make the 2.6km round trip to McDonalds, but was unable to be bothered to travel a final 6 metres to dispose of their rubbish.

Some of it will of course end up in our drains and storm water system, which explains why every drainage outlet needs an enormous litter trap, and why the traps need to emptied regularly.

I took this photo on Sunday morning.  The rubbish was still there, but a presumably frustrated person had dragged the bin over to this spot.  I guess they were trying to send a message to the litterbugs.  

I wonder what we will find next weekend?

a) Rubbish in the bin

b) Bin kicked over and dumped in the water

c) Bin set on fire, leaving a blob of molten plastic on the grass

Boystown Lottery tickets help clean up Sydney’s graffiti

Details here.

Almost three acres of Sydney’s graffiti has been cleaned up, in a ground breaking project partly funded by the BoysTown Charitable Lottery.

In the past 12 months, 10 young indigenous people from social housing in Blacktown and surrounding areas, have been employed and trained to remove graffiti.

“Focusing on the Bidwill/Mt Druitt area of western Sydney, the team has since removed over 11,000 square metres of graffiti and repaired roughly 300.

Brain death

It boggles the mind that someone could think that putting up an official Department of Transport poster on a bike locker, right over the top of graffiti, was a good idea.  Would it not have been better to clean the locker first, and only then put the poster up?

I've fired off an email to our local MP, Angela D'Amore, attaching these photos and asking her to contact the Minister for Transport in order to get this cleaned up.  People at the top should be notified about stupidity at the bottom.  The utter lack of common sense that this demonstrates is unbelievable.  It can only be a result of brain death.

I am almost lost for words.

Finally......

After a long, long, long campaign by a few of us, Basketball NSW have finally acted to have the extensive graffiti on their premises removed.  

It only took six months, and numerous requests and followups - but in the end, we got a result.  Some organisations are more painful to deal with that others, but most come around in the end.  All you need is a truckload of tenacity and the ability to grit your teeth in the face of an obstinate unwillingness by some people to do anything about their image and their work environment.

Given the state this office was in previously, if I had scored a job interview with Basketball NSW, I would have walked away the moment I saw the place.  Similarly, if they wanted me to sponsor their sport, I would have walked rather than enter their premises to negotiate a contract.  A bit of graffiti is tolerable, but they had let the place go to such an extent, it had to be having some impact on their business.  

The results of dealing with deaf organisations

Luckily for me, none of the problems that I deal with are life and death.  However, in some areas they can be, and this story from the Victorian bush fires shows how the alleged failure of government authorities to respond to the concerns of residents can be deadly.

This story also highlights why I believe it is vital that any contact that you have with a government organisation must create a paper trail.  If things do go wrong, you don't want to be in a "he said, she said" situation.  Put your concerns down on paper, and put a note in your diary to follow up within a suitable time period - perhaps 3-4 weeks later.  

In some cases, tenacity and follow up will be required in large measures, and it may be a case of constantly wearing the buggers down until they finally see sense.

KISS

KISS - as in "Keep It Simple Stupid" is a great philosophy to follow when managing anything.

This blog is not about graffiti.  Instead, it is about reporting and following up anything which impacts on our quality of life - fallen trees, fallen power lines, pot holes in roads, unsafe foot paths, worn out park furniture, broken fencing, failed street lighting, boats that have slipped their moorings, burnt out cars, weed infestations, smashed bus shelters, abandoned cars, faded line markings, broken rubbish traps, useless signage, dumped rubbish, clogged drains - you name it.  Yes, I do report a lot of graffiti and vandalism, but that is not what this is about.  

The standard of our quality of life is dependent on thousands of people taking care of many, many little things every day in our "public spaces".  Inspections have to be carried out and routine maintenance performed.  If the inspections are not being undertaken, or the wrong things are being inspected, or if maintenance requirements are being ignored, then our built environment starts to degrade.  Our roads fall apart.  Bridges rust.  Signs fall over.  Trees get tangled in power lines.  Drains clog and overflow at the first shower of rain.  Wooden furniture rots and splits in the sun and rain.  Paint fades on road markings.  Street lights fail.

And apart from natural wear and tear, we also have man-made wear and tear on our public assets in the form of malicious damage, vandalism and graffiti.  Lights are smashed, signage is ripped up, fences are torn down, seating is broken, trees are trashed, rubbish bins are set on fire, fast food wrappers are dropped on the ground, bus shelters are smashed up, cars are left on the side of the road to rot and of course marker pens and spray cans are used to tag anything that doesn't move.

Some of these things are picked up during routine asset inspections by the authorities responsible, but many of them are not.  Most of the authorities responsible for what I would term the "maintenance of the public space" have been hollowed out over the last two decades by downsizing and contracting out.  That is not necessarily a bad thing - it has saved the taxpayer a fortune.  

However, the downside is that they no longer have the "eyes and ears" on the ground that they once had.  The days of the electricity company sending someone out to a substation to do a manual meter reading and inspection are long gone - now, it is all done remotely by a computer.  If someone does have to be sent out to do some work on site, chances are, they will be a contractor - and contractors are paid to do a specific task, not look for graffiti or damaged fences etc.  Even if they do notice something and want to report it, there may be no mechanism for a report to go from their company to the authority that has engaged them.

The days of there being a "someone" in the company to visually inspect an asset, report it and fix it are long gone - and they're not coming back.

So if you care about these things in the slightest, then we need a replacement "someone" - that someone is you and me.

This blog therefore covers my experiences at being a "someone", and my refusal to see many things as "somebody else's problem".  I've had some failures along the way, but on the whole, the great majority of problems that I have spotted and reported have been fixed.  If you are interested in being a "someone", I hope this blog can provide some guidance and encouragement.

I started this article with the KISS principle because many organisations that I deal with appear to have never heard of it.  After reporting many, many problems over the last year, I have decided to put the majority of my efforts into encouraging organisations to simplify their processes for dealing with the sorts of issues that I report.  If their processes were perfect, there would be no need for you and me to be reporting problems.  

Fly, be free!

Back in early February, I noticed that the Police were unable to fly the state flag properly outside the Five Dock station because it kept getting tangled in an encroaching tree.

I asked council if they'd trim the tree, since the tree is on public land.

Going past last night, I noticed that the tree had been well cut back, and the flag can now flutter freely in the breeze.

Next step - teach the Police about flag etiquette, and hauling it down after dark.  They can no longer say, "It's stuck in the tree" as an excuse for leaving it up overnight.  I have passed some information about flag etiquette to an associate in Police HQ - we'll see if it works it way down the chain of command to the front line here at Five Dock.  When I see a bare flag pole out the front of the station after dark, I'll know that the message has made it through.

You abandon at your peril

The registration sticker of a car abandoned in Lilyfield.  Reported to Leichhardt Council via email.  

I went past the sites this week of four other cars and a boat that I have reported as abandoned since Christmas - all have been removed.  Our streets can't be treated as dumping grounds for cars when the owners can no longer bother to fix or register them.

RTA utility box murals

The RTA has been organising to have regularly vandalised utility boxes in the Leichhardt area repainted by a local artist.  The work has to be organised with the local council - the RTA preps the box and the council organises an artist to do the work.

I'm going to try and tweak the interest of Canada Bay council in doing this as well.  

The usual disjointed approach

I was surprised to see a "new kid in town" today - a private graffiti removal services truck parked in Concord.  I stopped and had a quick chat with the bloke doing the cleanup - he said that the RTA had contracted the work to Downer, who had then subcontracted it to his company.  He was painting all the sound barriers for the RTA.  

This is undoubtedly a good thing.  The barriers were a mess, presenting an unappetising slew of graffiti for 100 metres or so, visible to thousands of passing cars each day.  

I'll wait before I give the RTA a gold star for a job well done, since I want to see how the RTA reacts when the tagging starts again.  Will they get rid of any tags quickly as they appear, or will they wait two years for the wall to become an utter disaster again, before initiating a major project to repaint the lot?  

As for the disjointed effort, I suppose we will find that the managers that take care of the sound barriers work in one silo at the RTA, and those that manage the traffic lights work in another silo, and they never communicate with each other (this is not atypical of a large organisation, private or public).  The pole in the foreground is of course an RTA traffic light, which was not being touched (as far as I could see).

Almost every light pole along this stretch of road is also tagged, and the lights are generally the responsibility of Energy Australia.  Although the RTA and Energy Australia both sit on a government Graffiti Task Force, I guess it was too much to ask for them to coordinate their approach to this location, and to have all the RTA and Energy Australia assets cleaned in the one go.  We can only hope that such a thing will come to pass in our lifetime.

Some people are grubs

Canada Bay is a nice place to live - it's been voted one of the best places to live in Sydney.  We have lots of waterfront, plenty of parks, good facilities and interesting shopping precincts.

Pity about some of the residents.  A very small minority are complete pigs, expecting others to pick up after them all the time.  This is a fairly typical, and unfortunate scene at one of our waterfront parks.

This shot shows the distance to the closest bin - I measured it at 6 metres.  

They can be bothered to make the 1.3km trek from McDonalds to this park (as measured on Google Maps), but can't be bothered to make the 6m journey from this bench to the rubbish bin.

I don't understand this mentality.  Can anyone explain it to me?

Does nothing offend Australia Post?

Australia Post seems to have woken up somewhat over the last 6 months and is now making a much better effort to clean their red post boxes and green distribution boxes.  However, they still have a long way to go.  A number of post offices in our area have had graffiti scrawled over them for months, and nothing has been done about it - the post office in Majors Bay Road, Concord is a case in point.  

Here is a more extreme example of offensive graffiti on an Australia Post asset.  This has been here for some time, but I only got around to reporting it today.  

Bear in mind that an Australia Post staff member or contractor would park right in front of this box once a day to deposit sachels of mail for delivery, and another staff member would stop here once a day to pick up those sachels before heading out to deliver the mail.  I'm a reasonable person - if I worked for Australia Post and I saw this on "my" box, I'd like to think I'd do something about it - like report it, and hassle my manager occasionally if nothing was done about it.

Somewhere inside Australia Post, something is seriously broken if stuff like this is allowed to hang around for weeks before being removed - and it is only removed if a member of the public reports it.

As an aside, I usually take a photo of the nearest cross street to remind me of the location when I spot things like this.  Here is my memory jogger:

And here is the response that I got from the Australia Post website.  For some reason, their system doesn't immediately send out a confirmation email like most others.  There are quite a few more boxes like this that need cleaning, but I'll wait and see how Australia Post respond before bothering to report them.

Your request relating to Street Posting Boxes, has been received and a customer service representative will endeavour to respond to you within 2 working days.

This is an automated response.

Your Enquiry – please clean the graffit from the green post box on the corner of nullawarra ave and wilga st in concord. it is offensive - one tag says "always bring cash c*&nts"..

You can lead a horse to water....

I rang Envy Hair & Beauty, a local Five Dock business today, to ask them if they were ever going to remove the graffiti on the side of their shop.  

Since I took the photo shown in the earlier post, it's gotten much worse.  If not quickly removed, it multiplies like wildfire.

I spoke to the manager, and she was very abrupt - she muttered something about "I just tell the landlord", and she was quite dismissive - almost rude.  I asked if she knew about the Council service where they will pay 50% of the removal cost, and she was again almost rude in her response.  It's as if she just didn't want to know - not her problem.  Somebody else's problem of course - and if she does nothing, it will magically go away.

RailCorp pwned

The history - late in 2008, I got a letter from RailCorp suggesting that I ask the local council to clean their rail bridge.  I didn't see why a council should be responsible for cleaning a rail bridge, but I did as was suggested and contacted Leichhardt Council.  I got their response today.

The response from Council to RailCorp is polite and structured in the usual bureaucratic fashion (I have written hundreds and hundreds of letter like this), but in essence, they are telling RailCorp to pull their head in and to not try to offload maintenance activities to councils.

Good on them.  I rang Leichhardt today and left a message for Allan Willding to let him know that he is a legend.

Returning the favour

Last year, just before the annual Ferragosto festival in Five Dock, I suggested to one of our councillors that they should do a graffiti "spring clean" along Great North Road where the festival is held.  I'm not sure if it was my suggestion that actually led to the cleanup happening or not, but the area was spruced up.

In the process, a police officer issued a parking ticket to the council graffiti truck for parking in a "no stopping" zone outside Fred Kelly Place, where a cleanup was taking place.  The truck has to park close to the site being cleaned, as the pressure hose will only reach so far, and there are limited places where a truck of that size can stop.

You might think that a police officer would exercise a bit of common sense and not issue a ticket to a council worker carrying out this sort of duty - but that was not the case.

Therefore, let me return the favour by posting this photo of a police van illegally parked in the same spot on 20 November 2008 at 1.40pm.  As I watched, an officer came out of the fish and chip shop up the road with several bags of fish and chips and jumped into the van, which then moved off.  I presume that was lunch for the staff back at the Burwood station.

The police van was there for some minutes - for all I know they waited there the entire time the fish was frying.  They didn't appear to be responding to a crime - they were responding to hunger pangs.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have posted this photo - but when I found out that the council graffiti truck had been ticketed for parking here whilst performing a useful community service, I decided to post it.  Are some police officers deliberately trying to destroy any hope of inter-governmental cooperation of tackling graffiti?  Was this really in the public interest?  Whose side is this particular police officer on - the community or the criminals?  

It's a sad day when the police decide that raising revenue by ticketing a council graffiti cleanup truck is more important than actually tackling those that put the graffiti there in the first place.

Do you know who owns this cabinet?

A utility cabinet in Leichhardt, ownership unknown.

Tracking down ownership of cabinets like this can generally be a challenge if the companies concerned don't bother to attach an asset tag.

RailCorp vs Leichhardt Council

This letter is pretty self-explanatory.  I'm still waiting for a response though - it's been nearly 3 weeks.

27 February 2009

Councillor Jamie Parker

Mayor

Leichhardt Municipal Council

PO Box 45

Leichhardt NSW 2040

Dear Mr Parker

Removal of graffiti from railway structures in Leichhardt

I have had a series of correspondence with RailCorp since May 2008 regarding the removal of graffiti from a rail bridge at Charles St, Leichhardt (near the corner of Darley St).  

The last response from RailCorp in November suggested that I contact your Council in order to have it removed.  Personally, I doubt that the removal of graffiti from railway bridges is a Council responsibility, but I did phone Leichhardt Council in November to report it.

I would appreciate it if you would approach RailCorp and ask them to clean up the bridge in question, and assist them with any road closures that may be required to repaint or clean the bridge.

Yours sincerely

Rubbish dumping in Bondi

A friend of mine has her kids at Bondi Public School.  They have an ongoing problem with locals dumping quite sizable quantities of rubbish in and around the school grounds.  

They don't sit around though and wait for someone else to report it and remove it.  They get right onto it, reporting it to Waverly Council straight away and reporting dumpers if they catch them in the act.

They don't expect council to magically find out about rubbish like this and arrange for its removal.  They know that council does not have a CCTV system blanketing the suburbs, with operators sitting at terminals constantly scanning for dumped rubbish on the side of the road.  The "CCTV system" is the Mark I eyeball of local residents.

Lack of common sense

Frankly, I feel like a dill for having to write this letter - but someone had to do it.

17 March 2009

Mr David Young

General Manager, Operations & Sustainability

Sydney Olympic Park Authority

7 Figtree Drive

Sydney Olympic Park NSW 2127

Dear Mr Young

Damage to park signage in Bicentennial Park

I refer to signage near the Victoria Road entrance to Bicentennial Park.

A number of structures around the Victoria Road entrance were defaced with graffiti in late 2008.  Whilst the graffiti has long been removed, several signs that were damaged beyond recognition have not been replaced.  The photo above shows one of them.

May I suggest that if the removal of graffiti also removes much of the information on the sign, then the sign should be replaced.  It’s not much use to visitors in its current condition.  A nearby sign was damaged so severely, it was removed – and it hasn’t been replaced yet either.  It might also be an idea to coat the signs so that graffiti can be removed without destroying the sign.

Yours sincerely

It doesn't affect my life if the sign is stuffed - I have been to the park plenty of times, and I know my way around.  However, leaving the signage in this condition will massively inconvenience first time users of the park.  

I can understand someone being told to go and remove the graffiti, and saying "Oops" as they discovered that metho removes graffiti and signage in equal measures.  What I can't comprehend is how someone could then leave it in this condition without doing whatever has to be done to get it fixed.

It also makes me wonder how often management gets out of their offices and actually walks around the park that they are supposed to be managing - this signage has been like this since before Christmas.

A tougher neighbourhood than ours

Detroit.

RailCorp fibs

RailCorp are doing their best to wriggle out of cleaning graffiti from a bridge in Leichhardt.  Recent correspondence from RailCorp stated that a "closedown" would be required in order to paint the bridge safely.  A "closedown" is where you stop all traffic on the line for a period - 4 hours, 8 hours, a weekend - in order to carry out an intensive set of maintenance tasks without having to worry about trains going through the site every so often.

I visited the bridge in question this week and photographed the tracks on one side of it.  Look at the weeds growing through the sleepers, and the rust on the top of the rails.  If a section of track has a lot of trains going back and forth over it, the railhead will be shiny, because the constant action of train wheels running over it removes any rust.  Rust is a sign of a rarely used or disused rail line.  So are weeds - if trains were going past here regularly, the weeds would have been knocked over by the trains.

You don't need a closedown to do work on a line that is for all intents already closed to rail traffic.  Why would RailCorp tell me that a closedown would be required to paint the bridge?  Either the Ministerial Correspondence Unit is not talking to the managers in the field responsible for this section of line, and they are just making it up as they go along to shut me up, or someone is spinning them a line.

I'm tempted to FOI the timetable for this section of line for the last few months, including the SWT (Special Working Timetable), which lists any special trains (ie, trains not in the regular timetable) that have gone past here.  The goods yard at the end of the line is showing no activity and plenty of tall weeds, so it would appear likely that the line is unused.  If the timetable shows that no trains are using this track, or they are only using it once every week or so, then someone at RailCorp has been fibbing.

Is all graffiti being reported?

About six months ago, I discovered that not all government agencies report graffiti in the same way.  Schools appear to report almost all graffiti, but I am not sure about other arms of government.  I wrote last week to the Minister for Energy, Ian Macdonald, to ask him about how Energy Australia goes about reporting graffiti to the Police.

My concern is that if they aren't reporting it, then we don't have a complete picture of graffiti on public assets.  If Police arrest and charge a culprit, they may charge them with only a tiny percentage of the offences that they have actually committed, because lazy authorities have not provided the Police with a complete picture of their graffiti situation.

Once I get a response from Ian Macdonald, I am going to ask some other ministers about how the agencies in their portfolios go about reporting graffiti.  I made sure in this instance to list most of the reports that I have made, and then asked for a COPS event number for each instance.  If Energy Australia have a COPS event number, then it's been reported properly.  If they don't........

6 March 2009

The Hon. Ian Macdonald

Minister for Primary Industries, Minister for Energy, Minister for Mineral Resources, Minister for State Development

Level 33

Governor Macquarie Tower

1 Farrer Place

SYDNEY NSW 2000

Dear Mr Macdonald

Energy Australia – graffiti reporting policy

As you may be aware the Attorney General’s Department runs an Anti-graffiti action team, of which Energy Australia is a member.

It has come to my attention that not all government authorities are reporting graffiti to the Police, even though this is strongly recommended by the Attorney General’s Department, and is plain common sense.

I have reported a number of instances of graffiti to Energy Australia over the past 9 months.  I want to be assured that as well as removing the graffiti, Energy Australia are reporting each incident to the Police for recording in the COPS database.

I have attached a list of Energy Australia case numbers, each referring to a report of graffiti that I have made to Energy Australia via telephone.  In all cases, the graffiti has been removed.  However, what I want to see is the COPS Event Number for each case, and the date each report to the Police was made.  

Please arrange for Energy Australia to provide this information to me.

If Energy Australia has not been reporting graffiti to the Police, then I would like you to explain how a failure to report fits in with the government’s anti-graffiti stance.

Yours sincerely

Kiosk Energy Australia reference number

k2051 REF 500064083

3219 REF 500064084

2829 REF 500064085

3599 REF 500064086

K1573 REF 500064087

4854 REF 500064088

50062885

50062886

50062887

50062888

50062889

50062890

50062892

50062893

50062894

50062896

50062897

500059339

500058754 

500058755

500058559

500058369

500058396

50003897

50003898

500058348

500058373

5000583470

500058371

500058372

Substation 3219 Ref 500058614

Substation k2051 Ref 500058615

Substation cp228 Ref 500058616

Substation at manning & springside Ref 500058617

Substation 4082 Ref 500058618

Substation 2178 Ref 500058619

Substation at Barnstaple & Trevanion Ref 500058630

Fix my street

They are way ahead of us in the UK - fixmystreet.com

Smashed up bus shelters and social justice

Over the last 6 months, I've reported a number of tagged and smashed up bus shelters around Canada Bay.  Most shelters and most bus signage belong to council, but some is the responsibility of the RTA, and Sydney Buses have recently been rolling out information posts with timetable information on them.  I'm not sure if Sydney Buses are responsible for the ongoing maintenance and cleaning of those posts or not.

Regardless of ownership, if a shelter has been provided for bus customers, then the least that they can expect is that it will be somewhere that they can wait in a reasonable level of comfort. For pensioners, this may mean having a clean seat to sit on, and some shelter from the elements - the sun in summer, and the wind and rain in winter.  At night, if lighting is installed, it should be working.

I've gone past bus shelters and seen customers unwilling to stand or sit in the shelter because of the amount of rubbish and graffiti within the shelter, or because the shelter has been vandalised by breaking glass panels.  It's disheartening to see pensioners standing in the rain next to a smashed up bus shelter when they clearly need to sit down and rest.  

So you can think of keeping bus shelters in good order as a social justice issue, which should be right up the alley of a Labor government.

I wrote to the Minister for Transport earlier this week asking that Sydney Buses be directed to report damaged and vandalised bus shelters and signage to the appropriate council.  I'm sure I'll get a wishy-washy response, stating that Sydney Buses have a parternship with councils and are working closely to address the problem etc etc.  If what I have seen is an indication, then stating something like that would clearly be a blatant lie.

Regardless, my aim is to get Sydney Buses to view vandalised bus shelters and signage as a problem that they have to deal with, rather than somebody else's problem.

10 March 2009

The Hon. David Campbell MP

Minister for Transport, and Minister for the Illawarra

Level 35

Governor Macquarie Tower

1 Farrer Place

SYDNEY NSW 2000

Dear Mr Campbell

Sydney Buses – graffiti reporting policy

I am writing in regard to the policy (or lack thereof) of Sydney Buses and their approach to reporting malicious damage and graffiti to bus shelters.

I am aware that most bus shelters are the responsibility of local councils or the RTA.

Many of the bus shelters and roadside seats at bus stops in the Canada Bay area have been vandalised over the last 12 months – graffiti has been sprayed on shelters, signage and seats; glass panels in the shelters have been smashed and signs have been bent or pulled out of the ground.

Much of this damage would be clearly visible to the drivers of the Sydney Buses that stop at these shelters many times per day.  However, it appears that not one driver has bothered to report damage to any bus related infrastructure to the relevant council over the last year.  Sydney Buses expect councils to discover the damage on their own, or for bus customers or residents to report it to council.

My local member said the following in Parliament on 26 June 2008:

Ms ANGELA D'AMORE: The member for Castle Hill referred to my comments on graffiti. Any commander you speak to will tell you that one of the crime prevention strategies with graffiti is to actually report it and remove it within 24 hours.

Can you please explain to me how it might be possible for councils to meet the target of removing graffiti within 24 hours from bus shelters if no one from Sydney Buses ever bothers to report it?  From a legal and technical standpoint, Sydney Buses are correct in standing back and declaring that it is “not their problem”.  However, from a whole-of-government standpoint, their bloody-minded approach to graffiti on infrastructure installed specifically for bus services is appalling.  

Most of their customers would not realise that Sydney Buses is not responsible for bus shelters – it took me some time to find out that this is the case, as information on bus shelter ownership is not readily available.  As far as the customer is concerned, the condition and quality of the bus shelter, signage and seating is ineluctably associated with the bus service.  If I catch a bus, I walk to a bus stop and rest in a bus shelter whilst waiting for the bus to arrive.  I do not walk to a council-provided roadside sign and rest in a council-provided weather sanctuary whilst waiting for a bus to arrive.

Please direct Sydney Buses to change their policies in this regard, and to become a good corporate citizen.

Yours sincerely

Trapping trash

I have embedded this video so you can see what trash traps on waterways look like (in case you've never had a good look at one).

More sign of the times

This collection of photos was sent to me this week.  They speak for themselves.  They've been reported to Parramatta Council via their online service request system.

Forward progress

I am looking forward to the day when I can shutdown this blog, my job being done.  I don't see my job as reporting graffiti or complaining about pot holes - my aim is to transform the way our utilities think so that instead of them requiring me to report a problem to them, they find problems off their own bat and fix them quickly.  I am hoping that I can convince them to move from be reactive to proactive.  When that happens, I'll hang up my keyboard and find a better use for my time.

We are not talking about enormous, groundbreaking shifts in policy here, or massive bureaucratic restructurings or organisational transformations.  We are talking about small, simple changes - like the way Canada Bay Council rewards staff for reporting problems.  Each month, the names of all staff who reported something go into a hat, a name is drawn, and the winner gets a voucher or reward of some sort.  It's not expensive, it's not sophisticated, and it doesn't work for everybody - but it motivates enough people to make a significant difference at minimal cost.  

Similarly, council uses a simple online database to track graffiti.  It's not even their database - they've simply purchased access to an off the shelf system that can be used by any medium or large organisation with a graffiti problem.  Council are running reports on the database, finding out where there is a lot of repeat business, and targeting those sites for regular, proactive checks and cleanups.  How simple is that?  You can call that data mining if you want, but I call it plain common sense.

I would like to think that Energy Australia will one day move to a policy of proactive monitoring of their kiosks and substations.  They have hundreds of staff on the road everyday in Energy Australia vehicles, attending to jobs and tasks here and there.  Is it really that hard for management to ask their staff to keep an eye out for kiosks as they are driving around, and to report graffiti on any that they pass?  Are there any realistic impediments to them adopting a Canada Bay style rewards program for reporting graffiti?

Similarly, the RTA has hundreds of trucks and cars on the road everyday.  Many RTA structures are the targets of vandals - particularly bridges and noise barriers.  Is it that hard for RTA management to motivate their staff to report damage to their assets?  

Then we have Australia Post.  A postie visits a post box every day to empty out the mail.  It's not like they have to look out for post boxes as they drive past, or peer at them from across the street to see if they have been vandalised.  Instead, they stand in front of them, open them with a key and remove a sack of mail from the inside.  They get to walk around them too as the doors are on the footpath side of the post box.  The posties are obviously seeing the graffiti up close and personal - and I'm sure many of them are sick of it - so why aren't they reporting it?  What cultural change is required to motivate posties to report vandalism?  What kind of cultural sickness or malaise are they currently suffering from that stops this sort of thing from happening?

The same goes for Sydney Buses.  Buses pull up at bus stops 50 times a day or more, and sometimes those bus stops are vandalised to hell and back - but not a single driver seems to think that they might be doing their customers a favour by reporting it.  

Telstra seems to be coming around.  I was told this week that Telstra are working on a deal with Canada Bay Council that will allow council to remove graffiti from Telstra exchanges in the area.  At least I hope that's what they are intending.  I'm sure the lawyers will be working on it for the next six months before a deal is signed, but the change of heart is encouraging.

RailCorp have also put in a big effort recently to remove a huge slab of graffiti from a very badly vandalised site in the council area.  I hope this is the start of a change of heart when it comes to removing graffiti from the rail corridors - but I'm not holding out much hope just yet.  I'm worried that they won't bother going back each month to remove any minor graffiti that appears, and before we know it, the site will be a disaster area again, and RailCorp will be moaning about the huge cost of removal.

Well, you know what?  Graffiti is like cancer.  If you tackle it early and quickly, you can get it under control and even defeat it.  If you let it go, it multiplies like crazy, and you're dead meat.  If you treat it regularly and keep it under control, the cost is much lower than allowing it to go to hell, and then facing a massive bill for a huge cleanup.

The Education Department is also showing signs of a change in thinking.  I'm hoping that they might decide that it is more sensible to handover the job of graffiti removal to council, since council do it quickly, effectively and relatively cheaply.  Getting council to do it also removes a lot of the hassle that schools currently have to go through when they are vandalised.  Here's hoping that sensible thoughts don't get shot down by the bureaucracy before they are given a chance to succeed.

So I might get the chance one day to hang up my keyboard.  Here's hoping.

Bunnings, Lidcombe

Bunnings sell an enormous range of useful goodies, including rubbish bags and tools to help you pick up rubbish.  It's a pity that they don't seem to make much use of them at the Lidcombe store.  The store carpark backs onto the motorway, and a great deal of rubbish has built up against the boundary fence.  Someone is cutting the grass along the fence, so they must know it is there - but no one is doing anything about it.

They're probably using a contractor to cut the grass, and the contractor doesn't see it as their job to report the huge pile of rubbish along the fence.  Or the contractor has been engaged by the landlord, who doesn't care.  Whichever way you look at it, it's not good for Bunnings image as a good corporate citizen.

I've used the feedback form on the Bunnings website to ask them to clean this up.

Not all the rubbish is on the Bunnings side of the fence, the bike path and motorway reservation are being used for illicit dumping of bulk rubbish.