Yellowknife (June 04/03) - Obscenities scrawled on buildings, indecipherable symbols sketched on bus stops and even a simple "Jack loves Jane" -- it's all graffiti and it's all over our town.

Andrew Morton, city facilities manager, says the city will be cleaning this graffiti at Ruth Inch Memorial Pool sometime this summer. - Cheryl Robinson/NNSL photo

According to Mike Elgie city operations and maintenance superintendent, the City of Yellowknife doesn't have any designated funds in the operations and maintenance budget to clean graffiti off city property.

When city workers clean graffiti off bus stops they are using time and money that should be used for something else.

"It's one of those irritating things like littering," said Elgie. "It's just ridiculous that we have to spend time and money on other people's irresponsibility."

Elgie said city workers will remove anything vulgar as soon as possible, but admits other forms of graffiti are left behind.

"We try and get to as much of it as we can, as resources allow," he said.

Since the city doesn't have any quick and easy means of removing the paint, Elgie said it takes many hours to scrub it off using what he calls "the arm strong method."

Andrew Morton, city facilities manager, said the city is getting around to cleaning off the immense amount of graffiti scrawled across public buildings like Ruth Inch Memorial Pool.

While there is a small amount of funding available in his budget to keep public buildings graffiti-free, Morton said he is trying to save money through find volunteers or people owing community service hours to the courts to remove it.

When it comes to graffiti on buildings not owned by the city, there are no bylaws forcing the building owner to clean it off.

"But it is their responsibility to remove it," said Elgie.

If the graffiti is particularly offensive the RCMP will request removal, but if not, the graffiti can stay for as long as the building owner chooses to ignore it.

Bob Wilson, chair of the downtown enhancement committee, said urging building owners to clean the scrawl off their buildings for tourism purposes isn't something the committee has discussed yet.

"But I would urge the people who are doing the graffiti to contact me," he said. "We have a mural program going on now, so if they want to paint on buildings, they could get paid to do it."