A tale of two councils

Leichhardt Council has a program where they commission artists to paint the RTA cabinets at traffic lights. They've been slogging their way through the long list of traffic lights in the council area, and the results vary from fairly ordinary to pretty amazing (depending on how you feel about art).

I've asked Canada Bay Council to see if they can start a similar program next financial year. The difference between the two council areas is pretty stark, as you can see below.

Deliberate and accidental damage

A bus shelter, following an attack by vandals.  Two of the glass panels have been smashed out and left on the footpath.

The thing that really infuriates me about this is not the damage (that's bad enough), but the fact that at least 50 buses stop here every day, and it appears that not one employee of Sydney Buses thought to report this damage back to their depot, so that it could be passed on to Council.  It was left to me to ring Council this morning and report it.

Here's a photo of accidental damage that was emailed to me today.  This is an old sign, dating back to the days of Drummoyne Council, making it at least 10 years old.  Signs of this vintage tend to be painted, so when you try to clean them with metho, everything rubs off - graffiti and information.  

It's one of those instances where I hope the Council anti-graffiti team has gone "oops" and told the Council signage team that they need to replace this sign.  If not, it just goes to show that Council has some way to go until it gets its management "silos" talking to each other.

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Update [Wed 14 Jan]

The above sign has been reported to Council by a like-minded citizen, who emailed me the reference number - 30210763.

Silly signs

A big deal has been made about the 40 km/h limit outside schools.  I have read the odd complaint from motorists who have been fined in these zones when they failed to see the 40 km/h warning signs.

Here are two of the school zone signs outside Mortlake Primary School.  Oops, only one is visible.  The second is hiding behind that tree.

On second thoughts, it is hiding in the tree.

The view from the rear.

I am not going to make a fuss about this because the sign on the left hand side of the road is clearly visible, and the RTA paints big yellow boxes on the road to mark these zones as well.  They are pretty hard to miss. 

What gets me though is this - I asked the RTA last week to remove graffiti from signs around this school.  I even got a response from the RTA today - GE08/5462, to say that the graffiti had been removed.  

I refer to your e-mail concerning graffiti on the School Zone signs around Mortlake Primary School.

The RTA has arranged for the signs to be cleaned or replaced.

Thank you for bringing this matter to attention.

Kind regards

xxxxx

RTA Customer Services

If the RTA crew checked every single sign around the school, how did they fail to notice that this particular sign was completely and utterly obscured by a tree?  This is not what I would call a "quality outcome".

The sign below is very much end of life.  It dates from the days of the Municipality of Concord, which disappeared about 10 years ago when it was merged to form the City of Canada Bay.  If you can tell me what this sign is supposed to say, I'd like to know.  I reported this to Council today, along with a few other things, and they'll take care of it - because it is ugly and it has to go.

Queen Elizabeth Park, Concord

I have tried something different with this post.  I have created an album in Picasa and geocoded it using Google Maps.  If you click on the photo below, it will take you to an album showing all the photos in this set.  I am still trying to figure out how this works.

Queen Elizabeth Park, Concord

In the south eastern corner of Queen Elizabeth Park, there is a circular stone garden feature of some sort with stone seats around the edge.  The stone caps have been knocked off in some places and tossed into the garden - they need picking up and cementing back into place.

As usual, I'll have to call Canada Bay Council in the morning to report it.  What looks like another case of malicious damage.  

Update - I've reported it to Council.  Describing it over the phone was really difficult.  I should have just sent an email with a link to this page.

Broken drinking fountain - followup

On 10 August, I noticed a rather broken looking drinking fountain near the skate park in Five Dock Park.  I rang Council and reported it the next day, along with 6 or 7 other items.  I just happened to be going past that spot yesterday when I saw a Council employee working on some signage on the corner of the park nearby.  

I stopped and had a chat with him, asking whether he knew anything about the broken drinking fountain, which was hiding in the trees about 20 metres behind him.  It turned out that he didn't, but he promised to look into it.  I pointed it out to him, as the pebblecrete coating on the fountain makes it very hard to spot under the trees.

Funnily enough, just as we were chatting, another Council employee drove up and the bloke I was talking to said, "And here is the man who needs to know about it", so I left them to it.  I'll go back in a few days and see how they are getting on.

Reporting graffiti around the Five Dock library

I first noticed some tags on the side of the Five Dock library on Friday night.  I was going to report them to Council yesterday, but I thought "to hell with that".  There are numerous Council staff working in the library - I'm going to let them take care of it, so that if it appears again, they might report it themselves without me having to chase them.

So I rang the library this morning and let them know that they had been tagged, as well as Fred Kelly Place, and asked the lady who took my call to report it to Council.  She didn't sound too sure about that, but all the resources that she needs are on the Council website, and she is working in a library after all, which is all about information retrieval.

I'm more interested in training people to spot problems and report those problems themselves than having me do it for them.  I don't want to be the "somebody" in their somebody else's problem.

Update - Friday 22nd.

I rang Council this morning and asked them to do a search on their system to see if anyone from the library had reported it.  They couldn't find an entry in the system, so I asked that someone have a chat with the manager of this area and instruct them on how to report graffiti on the assets under their control.  They can then pass the message on to their staff.  

If a council employee can't figure out how to report graffiti on a council asset to the council service centre, what hope have we got?

Good news

Here we have the Council graffiti cleanup truck parked in the main street of the Five Dock shopping centre.  I saw it there several days running this week - the graffiti guy has been busy cleaning up a lot of the graffiti on shop fronts up and down Great North Road.  I suggested that Council might want to put in a special effort before Ferragosto, which is on this weekend.  Whether it was my suggestion that did the trick, or someone else saw the sense in ensuring that we present a clean face to visitors, it doesn't matter.  The result is that the area is being made more presentable.

White Lady Funerals have been true to their word and have replaced the beaten up, vandalised old fence at the back of their premises with something that looks much better.

Rothwell Park update

I visited Rothwell Park back in mid July and found that the fence along one edge of the park had been vandalised.

I finally got around to reporting that to Council yesterday.  

I got an email at 9am this morning to say:

Thank you for your report of graffiti on the northern fence line of Rothwell Park which you lodged with council yesterday.

These fences are private property and in accordance with council's policies and practices (see http://www.canadabay.nsw.gov.au/business_services/information_for_businesses/graffiti_removal_service.html) quotations for all the fences in this area were issued proactively to relevant property owners some weeks ago.

If these quotations are accepted and paid the graffiti will be removed.

Co-ordinator Building Services
City of Canada Bay Council

Council has done the right thing and approached the owners and provided quotes - it's now up to the owners to do the right thing and accept them.  

I hope there is someone living in Jones St, Concord (which is where the houses are) that takes up the cause and encourages all the affected owners in the street to do the right thing.

It's going to be a busy week for Council

Just been on the phone to Canada Bay Council.  Someone is going to have a bit to do this week.  Reported the following problems:

• graffiti in Goddard park
• Graffiti in Sibbick St Reserve
• Graffiti along the fence in Rothwell Park
• Graffiti on pagoda in Russell Park
• Signage vandalised in Allison park
• Water bubbler wrecked in Five Dock Park
• Graffiti on early childhood centre in Five Dock park

Council doesn't take care of bus shelters or the Kokoda Track Memorial Park, so I have two more calls to make.

Five Dock park

Five Dock park is a large park that contains a footy oval, a skate park, a couple of BBQ's, a kids playground, a childhood centre and plenty of open space for running around.

I spotted this near the skate park - a drinking fountain that looked like it should have been somewhere else - and standing vertically instead of lying horizontally.

This is part of the skate park.

And this is some of the rubbish that accumulates in the skate park.  There is plenty more around the edges of the skate park - it seems many skaters are unable to understand that if you throw your rubbish in the bin, then your skate ramp won't become unusable.

The Early Childhood Centre in the park, with graffiti.

A bus shelter on the edge of the park, opposite Domremy College.

Some stray beers bottles next to the bus shelter, and near the playground and Early Childhood Centre.

Another beer bottle in the same location.  I couldn't be bothered photographing all of them.

McIlwaine Park

This is tied into my next blog entry about Sydney Water.  The toilet block at McIlwaine Park has been tagged.  

This is a typical case of divided responsibility.  Council are responsible for the brick toilet block on the right.  Sydney Water own the brick pumping station on the left.  For all I know, Energy Australia own the grey equipment cabinet in the middle.

Unless there is some agreement between these groups, none of them will touch infrastructure that belongs to someone else.  That means that Council might turn up on Monday and fix the toilets, Sydney Water might turn up two weeks later to do the pumping station and Energy Australia (assuming the cabinet is theirs) might turn up two weeks after that.

The problem with such an uncoordinated approach is that any site with graffiti on it acts as a magnet to draw more graffiti back to that area.  It would be immensely frustrating for Council to clean the toilet block, then have to come back a few weeks later to do it again because the graffiti on the pumping station has brought the vandals back like a moth to a flame.

Goddard Park - followup

I went past Goddard Park back in July and spoke to two Council staff about this graffiti that they hadn't spotted as they worked on some playground equipment.

One of the Council staff said that they would report it, and sure enough, today the graffiti was gone.

Either we all missed this bit on another building in the park, or this graffiti has appeared since the cleanup was done.  Ah well, nobody's perfect.

Sibbick St Reserve

And a bit of graffiti goes hand in hand with..........

Russell Park, Drummoyne

I'll have to report this to Council on Monday.

Council graffiti cleaning in action

This sequence of three photos shows the good and bad side of ongoing efforts to remove graffiti in Canada Bay.

The first photo shows the Council graffiti cleanup truck stopped outside a shop in Concord as the cleanup man prepares to remove graffiti from the shop.  On the right of the photo is an Energy Australia substation - our graffiti man can't touch it.  He will clean the shop, but the substation will remain a mess - a magnet drawing back vandals who will undoubtedly tag premises along this stretch of road again.  Council can only clean what they are allowed to clean, which means they are fighting the problem with one hand tied behind their back.  Cleaning 50% of an area is not sufficient.

Graffiti cleaning about to start.

This is also on Crane St (where I took the above photos).  Note that whoever stuck these signs up for zoom.com.au stuck them up over pre-existing graffiti.  I have contacted Zoom via email and asked them to get this graffiti removed.  They might even decide to use the Canada Bay Council graffiti removal service (where Council pays for 50% of the cost).

I presume that whoever put the signs up thought, "Hmm, graffiti - somebody else's problem".

Richard Murden Reserve

I've never dealt with Ashfield Council, although they are just over the way a little bit.  I guess I'll have to start somewhere.

I started with their website, and tried to do a search on graffiti.  I got this in return:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

/searchresults.asp, line 10

I then had a look at their list of policies to see if any mentioned graffiti, but none seemed to fit the bill.  At least their website lists a contact email address.

These three photos are from the toilets in Richard Murden Reserve on Hawthorne Parade, Haberfield.  I've reported this via the general Council email address.

There was much more than this, but I couldn't be bothered photographing it all.

Here's food for thought - these toilets presumably get cleaned on a regular basis.  If so, are the cleaners reporting graffiti like this, or are they shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Not my problem - someone else deals with graffiti".