HUNTINGTON BEACH : Town Hall Meeting to Focus on Graffiti

A citizens’ group has scheduled a town hall meeting Tuesday to plan a grass-roots campaign against graffiti.

Members of Community Forum-Huntington Beach have argued that a year-old city program to give graffiti painters a legal canvas along the beach has backfired and led to an increase in illegal graffiti.

“They’re painting on the lifeguard stations, the railings, the garbage cans,” said Jan Shomaker, a member of the group.

“It’s going everywhere except in some cases on the seawall.”

Fourteen months ago, Huntington Beach set aside a section of seawall for artists and taggers to legally spray-paint. Those interested in marking the wall need a city permit.

Members of the Community Forum and the Police Department have said the program has led to an increase in graffiti elsewhere in the city.

Police also have said the legal program makes it more difficult to arrest vandals for possession of spray paint if they have a city permit allowing them to carry it.

Police officers and gang prevention experts have been invited to speak at the meeting.

Also invited is Naida Osline, a city art official who supports the legal graffiti program and disagrees that it is responsible for an increase in graffiti throughout the city. Osline said she will bring people to the meeting who have taken out permits to paint on the wall, Shomaker said.

The group has not called for an end to the legal graffiti program, Shomaker said.

“We’re not saying we don’t support it, but there’s probably a better solution in care-taking of the wall.”

Huntington Beach, like most every Southern California community, has been hit with a dramatic increase in graffiti as the popularity of “tagging” has spread.

Taggers try to spread their painted moniker in as many public places as they can.

The meeting will be held in the senior center at 17th Street and Orange Avenue.