BY BEN RICKER
• Mia Moran, the international
bestselling author of Plan Simple Meals
gives a talk 6:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 13, at
the Eugene Waldorf School, 1350 McLean
Blvd. The school says, “Moran will help
simplify and demystify what ‘good food’
means today. She will share some gems of
how to create the space to make good food
and even the time to eat it. She will share
several tools working with a regular rhythm
to make mealtimes manageable at home
— tools that work with middle school aged
children too.” $10 suggested donation.
More info at plansimplemeals.com.
• A Save the Elliott State Forest rally is
9 am Tuesday, Oct. 11, at the Department of
State Lands, 775 Summer Street NE, Salem.
The Many Rivers chapter of the Sierra Club
is organizing carpooling from Eugene. The
group says, “Add your support to the folks
from Coos County at the Save the Elliott
State Forest who are holding a rally at a
meeting in Salem with Gov. Brown and the
State Land Board to tell them the Elliott
State Forest should stay in public
ownership.” The State Land Board meeting
begins at 10 am; find more info at goo.gl/
W222NW.
• A Bethel Community Farm open
house is 2-5 pm Thursday, Oct. 6, and
Thursday, Oct. 13. The farm is located on 4
acres of land between Kalapuya High
School and Prairie Mountain School.
Organizers say the free event “invites one
and all to come see this Bethel School
District farm that has already grown
hundreds of pounds of produce in its first
season.” Farm manager Kasey White and
Kalapuya High School students will lead
tours of the farm “which includes a beautiful
new barn with a solar array, a greenhouse,
beehive and space for a future community
garden. Go to Kalapuya High School, 1200
N. Terry Street in Eugene.
• The city of Springfield is seeking
National Environmental Protection Act
(NEPA) approval to use federal funds on the
Franklin Boulevard Project in Glenwood. It
is seeking the approval using a process
called Categorical Exclusion, which would
not require an Environmental Assessment
or Environmental Impact Statement to fully
assess, and potentially mitigate, impacts
resulting from the project. Categorical
Exclusion requires that the project not
involve significant environmental impacts
or
substantial
controversy
on
environmental grounds. Under a Categorical
Exclusion, Springfield is not required to
provide notice or a period for public
comment on this documentation. To
express an opinion on a Categorical
Exclusion for the Franklin Boulevard Project
or request more information, contact Adam
Roberts, ODOT Region 2 Environmental
Coordinator, at 541-757-4165 or Adam.
Roberts@odot.state.or.us.
• Forest Treasures: Finding and
Enjoying Wild Mushrooms with Peg Boulay
and Bruce Newhouse is 7 pm Thursday,
Oct. 20, at the UO Law School, 1515 Agate
Street, Room 110. Organizers tell EW that “a
spirited tag team of two experienced fungi-
philes will show you how to responsibly
find, identify and prepare edible
mushrooms for your table.”
8
October 6, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
OUT DAMN SPOT:
GRAFFITI REMOVED IN
DOWNTOWN EUGENE
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATT CHANEY
RINSE AND REPEAT
Eugene’s graffiti removal plan
I
t never ends.
Eugene Public Works maintenance worker Matt Chaney
shows me his smartphone. The small screen displays a special
email account where he gets notes from concerned Eugeneans
who report new outcroppings of graffiti with the Lane Council
of Governments online reporting center.
A note comes in that someone tagged the word “mold” nearby
on 13th, he says, pointing to the message. There’s a chance one of
his guys is already en route to scrub it clean.
The city’s vandals freckle Eugene with stickers and graffiti.
And almost as quickly, counterinsurgents erase the vulgar tide
of looping colorful slogans that seem to multiply every time you
blink.
Neither side wins, but neither side loses, either.
Though the city says it has an active anti-graffiti program, graf-
fiti removal in Eugene looks more like a rough patchwork. The
city tracks the problem through a computerized reporting system
but funds only one small road crew to address complaints like the
one Chaney showed me.
Eugeneans who prefer order and cleanliness know the problem
is more serious than that. That’s why downtown business owners
organized the Downtown Clean Team program and other volun-
teers formed a graffiti removal outfit.
Localized anti-graffiti efforts like the Clean Team and the
Huckleberry Patrol close some of the gaps in the city’s graffiti
abatement plan; however, there are still a lot of holes.
Chaney leads a road crew with the city’s traffic department that
primarily maintains road signs and street markings. Several times
a week, though, Chaney puts one of his guys on an eight-hour
graffiti patrol shift that mainly covers hotspots like the downtown
corridor and the university district.
The rest of Chaney’s five-man team is always armed with
cleaning supplies and buckets of grey-green paint, just in case.
Other than that, Public Works’ approach is mainly complaint-
driven, Chaney says.
Public Works has received 1,000 graffiti removal requests
since New Years, he tells me — that’s more than three a day. For
a handful of workers covering a city that’s more than 40 square
miles (20,000 football fields) in size, that’s a ton of work.
The thing is, Chaney isn’t expected to respond to every single
call for help.
The city’s website says Public Works only removes graffiti
from public rights-of-way and city-owned facilities, but Chaney
says even that isn’t entirely accurate and that his crew doesn’t re-
move graffiti in most parks or on public buildings.
“I hate to tell people that,” Chaney says. “They aren’t usually
happy to hear it.”
He says he fields plenty of complaints from people still under
the impression that the city cleans any and all graffiti, no matter
where it pops up.
That’s probably because the city used to attack the problem
more aggressively than it does now, Chaney says, but budget cuts
six years ago forced his department to narrow its scope. These
days, he only washes graffiti off city streets, sidewalks, road signs,
utility boxes and sometimes bridges and overpasses.
On a weekday afternoon, it’s hard to spot even a trace of er-
rant spray paint or a “DERP” sticker to save your life. Downtown,
anyway, anti-graffiti forces seem to be in control of the situation.
Taking a broader view, however, the success with which the
combined forces of decency and order are prevailing over Eu-
gene’s streets is debatable — you don’t wander far from the urban
core before you begin to notice the superabundance of strange hi-
eroglyphs.
Chaney’s team does a thorough job within its limited jurisdic-
tion. The city says it erases more than 5,000 tags on public prop-
erty a year. Spray paint is cheap and Sharpie markers plentiful
— meaning, it’s still better to be a tagger in this particular turf war.
To help level the playing field a little, retired schoolteacher
George Jeffcott set up an anti-graffiti cleanup squad in 2007, call-
ing it the Huckleberry Patrol — a quaint nod to Mark Twain’s
Huck Finn, who is often erroneously associated with whitewash-
ing the fence in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Though Jeffcott died a few years back, his patrol fights on.
Part of the Eugene Police Department’s volunteer program,
Huckleberry Patrol teams scour downtown on bike about once a
week. A promo video uploaded three years ago to YouTube shows
former volunteer Claudia Carlson and Bob Walker in blue EPD
vests and bike helmets attacking Dumpsters and garbage cans
with spray bottles filled with environmentally friendly solvent.
It’s a persistent and complex issue that can be expensive to deal
with, says Eugene Chamber of Commerce president Dave Hauser.
Hauser has been with the chamber for 25 years. Over that time
he’s seen “great energy and a positive trajectory toward vibrancy”
downtown. “On the other hand, there are still a lot of public safety
challenges to overcome,” and one of them is graffiti, he says, be it
spray paint, stickering or scratched windows.
The chamber’s philosophy is: The quicker you deal with it, the
more of it you discourage. Hauser is involved peripherally with
a major, ongoing downtown cleanup effort operated by pro-busi-
ness nonprofit Downtown Eugene, Inc.
Downtown businesses and property owners pay a special tax
that gets funneled through the city and apportioned to DEI. Some
of that money fuels the Downtown Clean Team, a program that
gives low-level criminal offenders a community service alterna-
tive to paying court fines out of pocket.
Led by DEI’s private security detail, the red-capped Down-
town Guides, early-morning Clean Teams hit the streets before
sunup and finish their shift by the time most people punch the
clock.
“The city needs a lot of cleanup every day,” Hauser says, and
Clean Teams make a big difference inside the 12-block zone
where they operate.