UNTAG: Success, Part III

Painting out graffiti
Originally uploaded by CD-13

When we launched UNTAG (Uniting Neighborhoods to Abolish Graffiti) in 2004, my office set the ambitious goal of slashing graffiti in half in Council District 13 in two years. Last year, we met and passed that goal, with a reported 55% drop in graffiti in the area. Using an ever-expanding network of block captains, rapid-fire paint out crews, and a strong partnership with the police department, the communities of CD13 claimed a victory against visual blight and improved the quality of life in their neighborhood and beyond.

One year later, my staff and I once again drove the district and counted every tag in CD13. At the end of the day we reported a whopping 68% drop in graffiti from 2004, from a high of 20,763 tags in the first year to a new record of 6,677 tags this year. We've intensified our efforts, quickening the pace of paint outs, growing our army of block captains, and working with the police to respond to incidents of graffiti in high-tagging areas.

This year' s success was topped off when the Dodgers Dream Foundation donated $15,000 to the Central City Action Committee (CCAC), one of our paint out crews, allowing CCAC to buy a new equipment truck. CCAC employs youth to paint out graffiti, pick up trash, and beautify the community from which they come.

Department of Neighborhood Empowerment Congress

I attended the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) Congress of Neighborhoods, the annual gathering of Neighborhood Councils and community advocates. Residents from across the city gathered to discuss problems and solutions that face every community, from homelessness to historic preservation.

One issue that affects all Angelenos is graffiti. Tagging blights neighborhoods and intimidates neighbors. My office has worked to reduce graffiti by over 50% in the district over the last two years - and we've done it with a community-based solution. UNTAG, or Uniting Neighborhoods To Abolish Graffiti, has created a network of block captains responsible for reporting graffiti in a specific area. They report any and all tagging in their designated areas to the city, and it gets painted out quickly. UNTAG combines community organizing with technology and swift government response. It'll soon be available outside of CD13 - if you live anywhere in the city and you'd like to sign up as a block captain, contact my office.

UNTAG—Success!

The Canvas of Graffiti is Shrinking

My staff and I celebrated the two year anniversary of the launch of Uniting Neighborhoods To Abolish Graffiti (UNTAG) by driving throughout the streets of CD13 and counting every single tag in the district. In 2004, we announced that our goal was to cut graffiti in half over the next two years. It gives me great pleasure to announce that over the past 24 months, we have reduced graffiti by 55%, from 20,763 tags in 2004 to 9,419 tags this year. The amazing pace of removal and abatement of graffiti is a credit to the collaborative efforts of the team of volunteer block captains who have commited to reporting tags as soon as they go up, the preventative measures that the police have used, and the quick and reliable work of the city paint out crews.

What was interesting about this year’s count was the qualitative difference that we noticed as we drove the streets of the city. Graffiti has moved off of the big walls and sides of houses where it used to be, and is limited to smaller and more remote media such as mailboxes, light poles and street signs. The canvas of tagging is indeed shrinking, as taggers are getting more and more desperate. The change that we have witnessed gets to the core of what UNTAG is all about – making neighborhoods feel safer. With graffiti less visible, taggers are not able to intimidate like they used to. The success of UNTAG is really in the way it feels to walk though the streets of your neighborhood.

Another revealing observation from this count was the success of our effort to remove graffiti at designated “hot spots.” Working together, the police monitor those areas that are chronically tagged, and our block captains have fully utilized our “rapid response” paint-out system. The success of our hot spots demonstrates the power of the community, and how important community participation is in improving neighborhoods. Click here to become a block captain today!

Picture courtesy of zota

Ten Things Neighborhood Councils Can Do for Los Angeles

Congress of Neighborhoods

I had originally thought to address the Congress of Neighborhood Councils with a speech about ten things the city could do to improve the neighborhood council system. But as the meeting unfolded, I quickly became aware that I was in a room full of people who didn't want my assistance—they wanted to lead. So I turned my speech on its head: here are the ten challenges I presented to the city's growing neighborhood council movement. Neighborhood council leaders, I think you're up to the tasks.

1. Build power through knowledge. Bring the Government 101 curriculum to your community and teach your constituents how City Hall works. Start a Neighborhood Leadership Institute and bring some of the city wide curriculum we have developed (Planning 101, Planning 102, Planning 103, Housing 101, etc.) to your neck of the woods. These graduates will help your neighborhood have a more powerful voice throughout the city.
   
2. Use a blog to communicate with your constituents. Every community has people who serve as information hubs, who follow new development projects and who know the local goings-on. Recruit them as bloggers for your neighborhood council. People get involved and stay engaged when they can find regularly-updated information about the community. In Echo Park, where I live, the revitalized Echo Park Net is a great example.
   
3. Welcome new residents to your neighborhood and get them involved. Welcome-packs are a great way to introduce new residents to your neighborhood. Work with all of the local realtors in your neighborhood council area to put together critical information and useful tips, including how to access city services, a guide to local businesses, and your council’s Neighborhood Emergency Operations Plan (see number 9 below).
   
4. Empower young people in your community. If you do not already have a youth representative on your neighborhood council, get one! Adopt a local school and work with the social studies or leadership teachers to help identify or elect a student representative on your council.
   
5. House Los Angeles. The housing crisis in Los Angeles is the worst in almost sixty years. Less than 10% of Angelenos can qualify for a mortgage on the average-priced home in Los Angeles. Consider endorsing the principles of a $1 billion housing bond for the ballot in Fall 2006. Visit www.homesforlafamilies.org for more information.
   
6. Clean up your neighborhood. Bring UNTAG (Uniting Neighbors To Abolish Graffiti) to your neighborhood. This initiative reduced graffiti by 62% in a single year in CD13 and can work in your neighborhood, too. We recently expanded this program to go citywide, and all we are waiting for is you. Visit http://www.lacity.org/council/cd13/untag.htm for more information.
   
7. Clean up your city. Los Angeles has the country’s dirtiest air and water. We consume disproportionate amounts of resources and contribute to global warming. Assess your own neighborhood by measuring your environmental footprint at http://www.myfootprint.org and see what you can do to reduce your footprint. Work with the Bureau of Sanitation to see if your neighborhood might be ripe for a project to clean your neighborhood’s water through Proposition O. You can clean the water and beautify your neighborhood at the same time.
   
8. Clean up your government. Join the Clean Money Campaign to take special interest money out of politics. By implementing a full public financing system for municipal elections, Los Angeles can join other states and cities around the country that are returning democracy back to our communities. For more information, visit www.calclean.org.
   
9. Prepare for emergencies. Prepare a Neighborhood Emergency Operations Plan. Neighborhood Councils will be on the front lines of responding to any emergency situations in the city or in their communities. Work with the Emergency Operations Department and DONE to develop a 21st-century phone tree to help communicate with your constituents during an emergency. Be prepared!
   
10. Make policy. Help get final passage of the proposal to trigger the opening of council files when a critical number of neighborhood councils weigh in on policy proposals. This will help open a new chapter in neighborhood empowerment and build on many of the policy successes initiated by neighborhood councils, from cable policy to water rates.

Take back Lemon Grove Park

Last week, a young man was tragically murdered in Lemon Grove Park by a suspected gang member. The victim was playing basketball when the gang member missed his intended target and hit this young man instead. I would like you to join me next Saturday, October 15th, to reclaim the park as a place for our community to gather, eat, and play. A park full of people is a safe park.

At the same event, we will honor our UNTAG Block Captains who have helped reduce graffiti in CD13 by 62% in one year.

Bring your families and enjoy an afternoon in the park. Food and beverages will be provided. It will be a great opportunity for you and me to get to know each other better.

RSVP by emailing or calling Arsen in my field office, (323) 913-4693, before Wednesday, October 13th.

Saturday, October 15th, 2:30-4:00PM
Lemon Grove Park in Hollywood
4959 Lemon Grove Ave.

I hope to see you there.

CD13 is UNTAGged!

The results are in. One year ago, Chief Bratton, Public Works Commissioner Cynthia Ruiz and I stood on the steps of Micheltorena Street School to kick off our ambitious anti-graffiti program for CD13, UNTAG: Uniting Neighborhoods To Abolish Graffiti. We were joined by dozens of neighborhood activists who were frustrated by seeing the same tags go up on the same walls week after week and wanted to do something about it. Together, we pledged that in two years time, we would lower the amount of graffiti in CD13 by 50%.

I had been inspired by the example of Ron Gonzales, the mayor of San Jose, CA, who had remarkable successes lowering graffiti in San Jose. However, when my staff spent a day driving CD13 block by block to count tags, we found densities of up to ten times the graffiti found in San Jose. Still, we had our base number (20,763 tags in the 13.13 square miles of CD13) and we knew what we had to do to bring that number down.

The key to our success was our recruitment of block captains. Starting with the thirty or so people who signed up at our kickoff, we reached 100 block captains, people who took responsibility for reporting any instances of graffiti to our paint-out crews, either by calling our office directly or by using 3-1-1. We also won funding for security cameras (PDF) to be placed in parks such as Lake Street Park, whose brand new skate park, recreation center and playground had all been marred by acts of vandalism in the first months of its young existence. A year after our initial benchmark count—a year in which constant, block-captain-driven graffiti reporting had substantially increased the workload for our paint-out crews, Central City Action Coalition and Hollywood Beautification Team—my staff and I drove the district once again, counting tags with the same methodology we had used a year before. The results were astonishing. The entire day turned up only 7,970 tags: a 62% reduction in only one year.

Jocelyn Geaga-Rosenthal, a block captain from Historic Filipinotown, captured it best at the press conference announcing the results when she said, "Fighting graffiti is like brushing your teeth. You have to do it every day to see results." She added: "But now my neighborhood has a great big smile." UNTAG did the job with neighbors' engagement, smart police work, and real care. Let's keep up the momentum of reducing graffiti. Won't you become a block captain (PDF) today?

UNTAG one year later

A year ago, in preparation for the debut of my graffiti-fighting initiative UNTAG, I spent the day with my entire city hall and field staff driving every block of the 13th District, counting tags on buildings, sidewalks, utility boxes and nearly every visible space. On a single day in July, we counted 20,763 tags; that would be the benchmark against which we would gauge our success. A week later, I gathered with community leaders, volunteers, Chief Bratton and Public Works Commissioner Cynthia Ruiz to vow that we would cut the amount of graffiti in CD13 in half within two years.

On Thursday, my staff and I went out into the field again, using the same counting methodology we used last time. Once the results are in and processed, we'll announce how far we've progressed towards our graffiti-reduction goal. My fingers are crossed. Stay tuned!

Pioneer Women: Helen Brown, Jocelyn Geaga-Rosenthal

As part of the annual Pioneer Women celebration organized by the Commission on the Status of Women, I was delighted to honor Jocelyn Geaga-Rosenthal and Helen Brown in council chambers. Jocelyn, a dedicated community activist, is one of the founders of the Historic Filipinotown Improvement Association. She is an UNTAG block captain and is the president of the board of Westlake-Temple Development Corporation. She also runs a community art gallery on Temple Street called Remy's on Temple.

It was a special treat to have Helen Brown join us in council to celebrate her 90th birthday. Born and raised in the Philippines to parents who were involved in setting up the Filipino educational system under American rule, Helen Brown came to Los Angeles many years ago and founded the Filipino-American Library, now co-located with FASGI (Filipino-American Service Group Incorporated) at 135 N. Parkview. Helen has retired from public affairs so it was a special honor to have her grace us with her presence.

Helen Brown, far left; Jocelyn Geaga-Rosenthal, center holding scroll

UNTAGger tags tagger as efforts expand

Disclaimer: UNTAG block captains are notencouraged to personally chase down criminal suspects. It's dangerous. Call the police! That said, three cheers for UNTAG block captain Rusty Millar, who spotted a pair of vandals defacing a wall on Hyperion in Silver Lake on Tuesday morning. He took pictures, followed the suspects as they left the area, and got a neighbor to call police, resulting in an arrest. Rusty was one of our initial UNTAG block captains, and like the more than fifty others in the district, he has taken responsibility for reporting and painting out graffiti on his block. In this case, he's gone beyond the call of duty. Thank you, Rusty! At the exact same time as Rusty was chasing taggers, I was encouraging an "aye" vote on item 42 on the council agenda, the expansion of UNTAG to a city-wide program. It's time to replicate our success from San Pedro to Granada Hills. Council voted 12-0 to create a version of our home-grown program for all of Los Angeles. It will be directed by Operation Clean Sweep, the agency responsible for administering graffiti eradication contracts. It will replicate our system of block captains, surveillance cameras in graffiti "hot spots", and anti-graffiti techniques such as vining to curb blight and vandalism. Following council, the budget committee met in the afternoon. I made sure that we included $500,000 in the FY 2005-6 budget to support the citywide UNTAG program. Now we know that we'll be able to reach our goals. Unveiling UNTAG in June 200

The 2005-6 City Budget

After more than 40 hours of deliberation, the Budget Committee of the City Council has finished making its recommendations. The budget, which consists of adjustments made to the original budget proposed by the Mayor, will next be forwarded to the entire City Council for approval. Here are some of the things that I personally fought for in this budget, that the committee passed today:

• $500,000 to establish a citywide version of Uniting Neighborhoods To Abolish Graffiti (UNTAG), our highly successful, volunteer-based, CD13-grown initiative
• $100,000 for the Neighborhood Land Trust, which turns small lots into community parks
• $500,000 for Domestic Abuse Response Teams (DART), intervention teams that roll-out on domestic violence calls and help survivors of abuse extricate themselves from dangerous home situations
• Restoration of all of the Fire Department's 10-member task forces and of a 24-hour ambulance presence in all fire station houses
• $741,000 for the creation of a Department of Gang Violence and Youth Development, an idea, originated by my colleague Martin Ludlow, whose time has come
• $608,000 for 9 city planners, one of whom will implement the Silver Lake-Echo Park Community Plan update
• 23 positions and funding for illegal sign enforcement program, which will encourage creative signage in commercial areas while relieving our neighborhoods of ugly, illegal advertisements
• $50,000 for a street light on Santa Monica Boulevard, to prevent future accidents like the one that took the life of 9-year-old Seily Rodriguez

Also of note:

• End of the citywide hiring freeze, enabling departments to better serve the public
• $1.5 million in new materials for our libraries (after all, what good is a brand-new library without any books?)
• 5% increase in planning fees, which will help us hire new planners and eradicate the backlog in the planning department
• Boosted the reserve fund to about 3.5%, the highest rate in years

City Hall Update: Public Safety

In my first term, I worked with many of you on reducing gang activity, whether it was by supporting programs like L.A. Bridges II and the Aztec Firefighters to give young people alternatives to violence and crime, or through our community effort to eliminate graffiti, UNTAG. Going into my second term, I've embarked upon a concentrated effort to address gangs and graffiti by bringing together the groups that work on different aspects of the problem, such as Bridges, Central City Action Committee, and the Rampart LAPD Gang Unit.

I was devastated to learn of the death in a car accident of a young girl who was crossing Santa Monica Boulevard with her mother. A request had previously been made to install a crosswalk on that stretch of the boulevard near Hollywood Forever Cemetery, but it had been denied due to wrangling with CalTrans, the controlling agency for Santa Monica Boulevard where it is State Route 2. Sadly, state legislation enabled a transfer of jurisdiction to the city was not passed in time, but we now have the opportunity to make changes to the street there. With the imminent opening of a school on that block, it is crucial to make the area safe for pedestrians.

Keeping an electronic eye out for crime.

I'm proud of how many new parks we've been able to open in Council District 13, but what good is a new park if people are too scared to use it? One cost-effective solution is to give police the ability to survey parks at a distance with cameras. I was able to allocate nearly $400,000 in CDBG funds to pay for the installation of safety cameras in eleven district parks. The cameras will be monitored by police and are set up to only view public space; the first one was installed in Lake Street Park in Historic Filipinotown. Captain Charlie Beck of Rampart Division compares the transformative power of cameras on community policing to that of police radios. His father was a police officer before the advent of radios and remembers when he had to return to the station in order to be dispatched to the scene of a crime.