Getting bent

Some rather frisky fellows have taken a stroll down one of our nearby streets and bent all the street signs as they've passed. I counted half a dozen today where the signs are pointing at the ground rather than up the street in question.

"So what?", you say. "What's a few bent street signs?"

Someone from Council will have to come out and fix them up, that's why. Signs are there for a reason - to provide directions. When they are no longer able to perform that function because they are damaged or worn, then they have to be fixed or replaced and returned to a state where someone unfamiliar with the area can use them as intended.

What will it cost though to send someone out to fix them?

Well, it's probable that it will not be one person, but two. Someone to climb the ladder and someone to hold it. Plus you have the cost of providing a vehicle (such as a Falcon Ute), a ladder, tools, mobile phones and so on. Then you have the back office costs of supplying a supervisor to allocate and control the work, a depot to work from, offices in the depot for the supervisors and tool storage and so on.

I'm thinking sending a crew out to fix a bent sign will cost at least $250 if it has to be replaced. They might do one trip, determine that the sign is beyond repair, return to the depot, order a new one, then revisit to fit the replacement sign. That's an hour of travel time all up, another half hour or more on site to remove the old sign and put the new one up, plus all the on-costs of superannuation etc etc.

Once again, you say, "So what, the Council has plenty of money."

No, the Council does not have plenty of money. The only way for the Council to get plenty of money is for it to take more money from you and me. Or just me, if you are the type of unproductive person that enjoys breaking public property. If you think $250 is not a lot of money, then you are making a lot more money than me. Prove to me that it is not a lot of money - pay the full cost of replacing all those bent signs. In cash. Out of your own pocket.

Oh, so suddenly that's a lot of money, is it?

If there is one thing worse than people referring to a problem as being someone else's, it's spending someone else's money. Government money always seems to be free, and there appears to be plenty of it. It is not somebody else's money - it is our money, and I wish people would remember that. When public property is damaged, it is our property that is damaged. We, the public, paid for it, and we, the public, have to pay to put it right.

Didn't take long

This house used to be painted white, and it was covered in graffiti on both the front and side. A few weeks ago, a fresh coat of pink paint was applied.

Here I was, thinking that painting over the existing graffiti might deter vandals from striking again. Well, as Canada Bay Council point out in their newly released Graffiti Strategy, if you leave graffiti untreated for 2 weeks, there is a 100% chance it will come back. However, if you get rid of it within 2 days, there is only a 10% chance it will come back.

This is not some anonymous public structure, like a letter box, or an abandoned building, or a hoarding, or a business. This is someone's home. Those windows are someone's lounge room.

There are those out there that think graffiti is a victimless crime, and that we should just accept it. My guess is that the people advocating that idea have never had graffiti applied numerous times to the wall outside their lounge room, or had to put up with drunken yahoos carrying on at night every weekend in the park just over the road.

In their world, graffiti always happens to someone else.

Eavesdropping - again

From time to time I'll overhear something on the bus that piques my interest. 98% of the generally one sided conversations that you hear are as inane as listening to someone reading out a shopping list or describing how to disassemble a carburetor. But when a couple of feral looking teenagers sit down in front of you, it's time to perk up and listen in. That might seem nosy, but the volume that they interact at means that generally anyone sitting on the bus next door would be able to hear them, even if they were wearing a set of noise reducing headphones.

The latest pair to deafen all and sundry in the vicinity were on their way to the Five Dock Park skate ramp. I was coming home from work early, and it was a school day, yet they were on the bus at 1pm. From the content of their chatter, I discovered that they should have been at school, but their attendance was patchy at best.

After a few minutes of talking about vandalising this and that, they moved on to complaining about a certain pole in the skate park. According to them, the pole is placed in such a way to inhibit certain manouveres, much to their annoyance and distaste.

After describing the stupidity of the pole, they then started discussing ways and means of removing it - sawing it off with a hacksaw, bending it back and forth until it snapped at the base and finally angle grinding the stump out of the concrete.

Clearly, the two of them were incapable of actually doing any of this - it was just wishful thinking on their behalf. I felt like leaning over the seat and telling them how to contact Council and how to make a request to have the pole removed - but then they started talking about wrecking private property with spray paint, so I left them to stew in their discontent, happy in knowing that their skating will forever be marred by that pole.

I'm sure Council would remove said pole if a reasonable case for its amputation was made via the proper channels - the proper channels being sending an email to the address which can be found on the Council website, or phoning the number listed on the Council website, or writing a letter to Council. However, such simple actions seemed to be far beyond their ken - particularly the task of writing a legible and comprehensible request.

And that's just tough.

Third time lucky

Over the last few weeks, I've tried several times to get someone to take an interest in fixing a listing light pole along the City West Link. The pole looks like it was hit by a truck back in early August, which tipped it back somewhat as well as twisting it through 90 degrees. The pole appears to be slowly tilting towards the water, and it would be slightly embarrassing to those concerned if the foundations gave way one day and the pole crashed down across the running track and landed in the harbour.

After reporting it twice to Energy Australia and once to the RTA, I have finally received a response from Energy Australia saying that they will attend to it within 12 working days, which is their standard service level etc etc. I hope the pole stays upright that long.

The City West Link is one of Sydney's main roads. In any given week, dozens of RTA and Energy Australia employees must drive along it, passing the light pole in question. That includes those going to and from work, and those driving around in company vehicles during working hours. Did any of them bother to report it? No, because that would be somebody else's problem.

RTA vs Energy Australia; somebody else's problem

Five weeks ago, I noticed this broken light pole along the City West Link in Haberfield. A car or truck appears to have run off the road, colliding with the pole with enough force to push it back, twist it around through 90 degrees and snap the light fitting off the top of the pole.

I reported it to Energy Australia, and let a month go by. Nothing happened, so I reported it again.

My compadre has since suggested that these poles are taken care of by the RTA rather than Energy Australia (who look after about 98% of the light poles in Sydney).

I've now reported it to the RTA as well.

Energy Australia have been pretty hit and miss lately. In some cases, they'll clean a kiosk within a few days of me reporting it. Then a swag won't be cleaned at all. I don't know whether their system is "eating" a bunch of my reports, or some other gremlin is loose in the bowels of their bureaucracy.

If this is an RTA problem, why didn't Energy Australia make the effort to either:

a. Pass it on to the RTA, or

b. Tell me that it was not their problem, and that I'd have to report it to the RTA.

Like I said, very hit and miss at present. I have this feeling they've just said, "Somebody else's problem" and binned my report.

Getting busy again

Vandals must be fair weather creatures. At the first sign of a bit of cold, they disappear indoors and don't emerge for 4 or 5 months. However, once things warm up, they emerge from their caves and go to work with a vengeance.

I've reported a couple of Energy Australia kiosks twice over the last few weeks. They get cleaned up quickly, but are then hit again within a short period of time. I'm starting to forget which ones I have reported and which ones I haven't - the Energy Australia website sends you an email when you report a problem, but it doesn't include a description of your report in the email, so I can't tie reference numbers to assets. Small problem, but annoying when you are making dozens of reports.

For instance, I reported a light pole along the City West Link that had been smashed up by what appeared to have been a truck. It still hasn't been fixed, and I can't tell if that report has simply been lost in the Energy Australia system, or whether they take months to fix mangled light poles.

The playgrounds around this area have also been hit every week for the last few weeks. Council is very good about cleaning playgrounds - the mess usually seems to be gone the day after I report it. I might get around to putting in a report at 11pm at night, and it will be gone by the time I am on my way home the following day. There's no flies on our Council in that regard. However, the message isn't getting through to the parents of the young kids that use these playgrounds that if they report a problem to Council, Council will fix it.

That's not just graffiti - that includes worn out or broken equipment in the playground, or broken safety fences and gates. Council even replaced a rather holey shade cloth over a playground that I reported during winter.

Another week goes by...

Spring is here, and the vandals have emerged from their winter hibernation and have started stalking in their old habitats. After a few months of not seeing much to report, the first week of Spring has taken me back to my old levels of activity. There have been letter boxes, Energy Australia kiosks and RTA assets galore to report, all freshly covered in the colours of the new season.

The true mark of the turning of the seasons is the reappearance of graffiti on the grandstand in Five Dock Park. During the warmer months, the area around the grandstand is a favoured mating ground for the younger members of the species. They congregate, engage in drinking rituals, attempt to chat up the opposite sex and then leave their markings on the grandstand, much as dogs mark their territory by cocking a leg. The first tags of Spring appeared after Saturday night, perhaps after a festival of the equinox.

I can see a busy few months ahead of me.

The week that was

Things have been quiet this week. I've only reported one vandalised bus shelter (to Council) and one vandalised Energy Australia kiosk.

I think there are two reasons for this.

The first is that I haven't been travelling around as much as usual - work generally takes me to a variety of places around Sydney, but that hasn't been the case of late.

The second is that Energy Australia, the RTA and Australia Post have done a pretty good job of cleaning up their assets in this area, and the graffiti simply hasn't come back yet. There is nothing worth reporting in the places that I've been visiting.

The exception of course is Telstra, who are utterly useless. I need a major motivational boost before I start chasing them again.

I read a letter to one of the newspapers this week from a reader that was upset that the RTA had not removed graffiti along a certain stretch of road. I haven't been able to find that letter online, and I can't remember which paper it appeared in. I was going to write back saying, "All you need to do is contact the RTA and ask them to remove it - writing a letter to the paper won't fix anything".

They did have a point though - the RTA regularly patrol our major roads, but they never bother to report and act on graffiti along the noise walls etc. That really annoys me.

Unusual way of feeding the birds

I know there are lots of people that like to feed birds. They save old bread and give it to pigeons or ducks, and we have a bird feeder for lorikeets in our backyard.

Some people take a different approach. They favour feeding seagulls with McDonalds scraps. Their method is to eat their dinner in a car park by the water, then toss what's left out the window. The birds pick through the wrappings pecking off what they can, and then the rubbish is left behind to blow into the harbour.

An alternative method is to have a "picnic in the park", and then leave the rubbish behind. I've circled a neat pile of it in the middle of this sports oval - that would have been a feed for 3 or 4 people. Note the proximity to the rubbish bins.

I figure this is usually done by teenagers or young adults who have always had mummy around to pick up after them. Or their mummy doesn't give a bugger either, and they have copied her slack and lazy ways.

On another note, I've put in the usual number of reports this week - two vandalised playgrounds, a few Energy Australia kiosks with graffiti on them and the odd RTA traffic light cabinet. Energy Australia have been doing a good job of getting to their kiosks quickly and cleaning them.

Bronze medal

Back on 31 July, I reported three vandalised structures that are within 50 metres of each other - an RTA traffic light utility box, a letter box, and an Energy Australia kiosk. That was a Thursday.

By the following Monday, the letter box was cleaned. Australia Post got the gold medal. There was one working day between reporting and cleaning.

It took Energy Australia one more day to clean their kiosk - two working days.

The RTA were a bit slower off the mark. Here is that same utility box on Monday 17 August - still not cleaned.

Here it is on Thursday 20 August - clean at last. A turnaround time of 3 weeks.

Just think how much better things could be if these companies pooled their resources and had a single cleaner doing the cleanup. They could all be cleaned at lower cost to the taxpayer, and hopefully at the speed of the fastest organisation.

(Although knowing how government works, the combined entity would operate at the speed of the slowest company, and it would cost four times as much to get anything done).

Caring, sharing, artistic vandals

The EyeSaw exhibition in a public space in Ultimo is probably not my cup of tea as far as art goes, but it was pretty low of someone to deface the artwork and break into a piggy bank to steal donations to the homeless. The words "uncivilised" and "barbarians" come to mind.

''We decided to do something proactive and demonstrate the vulnerability of homeless people and life on the street,'' Mr Piper said.

''People loved the idea and there was a lot of traffic looking at the work. [So] we were devastated; we spent quite a bit having the pig made.''

Munroe Griss was one of many exhibits in the lane destroyed, sprayed with graffiti or stolen.

Ask and ye shall receive

Today - Friday. Good as new.

Wednesday - reported to Council late Wednesday night.

Not a bad turnaround time if you ask me. However, it's never going to get fixed if you continually treat the reporting of these things as somebody else's problem.

Mysterious morning tracks

I spotted these tracks in a Leichhardt car park earlier this week. I couldn't work out for the life of me what was going on here.

Not long after, I caught up with the Council "Green Machine" that was sweeping up the litter from the gutters.

Pity the Green Machine couldn't go off road and scoop up this McDonalds refuse left in the car park behind the rowing club. It seems every car park around this way suffers from after dark diners who can't be bothered carrying their rubbish to the nearest bin (and there was a bin nearby).

I posted photos a few days ago of rubbish on a boat ramp in Drummoyne. Many people would probably blame boaties for the floating trash. I don't - I blame the slobs that chuck their litter out their car window in car parks not far from the water's edge. It's pretty easy for a gust of wind to carry junk like this straight into the harbour, bypassing litter traps.

Failure to negotiate

Failure to negotiate a bend, that is. Something has whacked this... this.. whatever this is hard enough to rip it out of the ground. It's been like this for days. Reported it to Council tonight.

Thousands of people walk, run and cycle past this spot every day. How many have bothered to report it until now? Zip. Zero. Zilch. A mess like this is always somebody else's problem.

Just who are we dealing with here?

A story from the Daily Telegraph in 2007:

Each gang is ethnically based and routinely target teens for mobile phones, shoes and popular clothing and are involved in large scale graffiti, drug selling, vandalism and assorted robberies.

Nice kids, obviously.

Not everyone who sprays graffiti is a nasty little criminal, and not every criminal runs around spraying graffiti in their wake. However, it's interesting to see how often graffiti goes hand in hand with "harder" criminal activity.

I'd like the Police to pay more attention to graffiti because it provides them with a possible opening into other, possibly worse, criminal activity.

When the New York Police started enforcing zero tolerance, they arrested a bloke for jumping the turnstiles at the subway and after finger printing him, found that he was responsible for a string of murders. Criminals commit all sorts of criminal acts; busting them for the low range crimes may in turn lead Police to detecting other activities which are viewed much more seriously.

In addition, let's say that a particular criminal is involved in all the activities listed by the Daily Telegraph; graffiti, robbery, drug dealing and assault. The harder offenses may be harder to prove, but getting them locked up for a low level offense like graffiti still has the effect of getting them off the street. Al Capone went to prison for tax evasion, not murder. Take the same approach with graffiti.

As for cleaning it off, here is a story from the Village Voice from 17 July on graffiti. This is the photo used in the story, showing a wall being cleaned.

Intrigued by the story, I visited the site on 3 August. I'm not entirely sure what they cleaned up.

Nice catch

A boat ramp in Drummoyne. The right combination of wind and tide has conspired to push all the rubbish in this section of the harbour into this boat ramp. There are three distinct lines of trash across the ramp, denoting different tide levels. There'd be a couple of wheelie bins worth of rubbish on the ramp alone, and more blown up against the sea walls either side of the boat ramp.

One of the "tide lines" of junk.

Everything that floats is represented in this mess.

My guess is that this is a problem for the Waterways department, and it explains why they maintain rubbish traps on all the canals that feed into the harbour.

On the graffiti front, I've reported 17 separate Energy Australia kiosks, letter boxes and RTA utility cabinets since the end of the school holidays, and I have more to report tonight. The haul also includes a vandalised toilet block in a park and a kids playground. I reported a vandalised bridge to Ashfield Council on Monday, and it was cleaned the following day - top marks to Ashfield for quick work.

Silver medal awarded

I started a three-way race between the RTA, Australia Post and Energy Australia last Tuesday to see who would be the fastest to remove graffiti from their assets in a particular street in Russell Lea.

Australia Post took gold by cleaning their letter box on Monday.

Energy Australia took silver today - I noticed on the way home that they'd cleaned their kiosk.

The RTA is taking bronze, but I have no idea when they'll get their medal. Hopefully this week.

Stop thieves from nicking your number plates

I'm getting my plates done this weekend. If you live in the Canada Bay area, I suggest you get yours done too. I've put a note in my diary so I don't forget (like I did last time the Police did this).

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Burwood Police to fit ‘free’ one-way number plate screws to stop theft

Issued between 10 am and 2:00 pm, on the following days - 7,8,9 August 2009

Police from the Burwood Local Area Command will take part in a regional program, starting over three days this month, providing drivers with irreversible number plate screws free of charge.

Operation Tabella, a joint initiative by the NSW Police Force and the NSWAttorney General’s Department, will be the biggest project of its type undertaken in New South Wales.

Police, assisted by (specific LAC volunteer organisation/companies/agencies…such as Granville and Chullora TAFE, the State Emergency Service, Rural Fire Service, Beaurepaires, Bunnings etc), will man special “fitting stations” where motorists can attend and have the ‘one-way’ screws inserted.

The fitting stations will be established on the following dates:

• Friday 7 August - 10 am to 2:00 pm Council car park on Crane St Concord

• Saturday 8 August -10 am to 2:00 pm Council car park on Crane St Concord

• Sunday 9 August - 10 am to 2:00 pm Council car park on Crane St Concord

Motorists can log onto the NSW Police Force website for more information or contact their local Police Station for further details.

Additional, localised fitting sessions may be scheduled and the number plate screws will continue to be provided, free of charge, to the public until September 30.

Recent figures by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research indicate that number plates account for 12% of items stolen from motor vehicles.

There were 35 number plate thefts in the Burwood Local Area Command between January and May this year.

The stolen plates are often used in service station ‘drive offs’ (fail to pays), robberies, road toll fraud and other offences.

Burwood Local Area Commander, Acting Superintendent Arthur Aleksandrowicz, said smaller operations at Local Area Command level have proved successful in reducing number plate theft.

“As a result, the number of service station drive-offs in those areas has fallen dramatically,” Acting Superintendent Aleksandrowicz said.

“The tamper-proof screws can’t be removed without a special tool provided to police,” he said.

“We anticipate drivers who can’t attend the fitting stations on the allotted days will be able to attend their local police station following the operation and collect the screws, free of charge.

“People should make the effort to replace the screws on their vehicles.

“They’re free, easy to fit and difficult for thieves to remove…it’s just a sensible step to safeguard your number plates,” Acting Superintendent Aleksandrowicz added.

****************************

Issued by NSW Police Force Media Unit (02) 8263 6100

Authorised by A/Supt Aleksandrowicz, Burwood LAC)

Lights out

A light pole along the City West Link in Haberfield has been hit by something big enough to twist the pole around and snap the light off the top of the pole. Last time I went past, the light was lying in the vegetation barrier on the side of the road.

Whatever hit the pole moved it back a good six inches.

Every pole is supposed to have an asset tag like this one. I couldn't find one on the damaged pole, so I reported this number and said it was the pole next door.

It's been reported to Energy Australia via their website. Given that the pole has been like this for about a week, I am not assuming that whomever smashed into the pole bothered to report it to Energy Australia. I'm assuming that Energy Australia are "in the dark", as are the motorists who drive past here at night.

Civic Pride - or what's left of it

We have a winner.

Last Tuesday, I reported three vandalised items at the same location - a letter box, an Energy Australia kiosk and an RTA traffic light utility cabinet. The race was then on to see which company could clean their asset the fastest.

This morning, I can announced the winner - Australia Post! Frankly, I'm amazed, but they've won fair and square, so all kudos to them. They get the Good Citizenship award of the week. Next time I write them a letter, I'll attach a gold star.

I'm keeping an eye on this location to see who gets silver and bronze.

That good result is unfortunately sullied by the fact that even though a Postie visits that letter box every single working day, I had to report the vandalism to them. What is it that is stopping Posties from reporting vandalism on Australia Post assets?