In late January, a vandal tagged Council Member Elizabeth Crowley’s office with graffiti along the wall facing Furmanville Avenue. Crowley says she reported the crime to every authority imaginable and is committed to graffiti removal.

However, as I write this the first week of March, the graffiti is still there – and everywhere. NY1 reporter Ruschell Boone visited Middle Village on February 25th and filed a story showing just how embarrassingly bad the problem became this winter. She included the council member’s office in her report.
Crowley’s defenders insist that graffiti cannot be painted over or otherwise removed during cold weather, and so it will have to wait until the spring.

However, I submitted a 311 complaint regarding graffiti that I found in a park on Sunday, March 2nd and it was removed on Tuesday, March 4th when the high for the day was only 29 degrees F. We have had warmer days than that these past couple of months. There’s no excuse for allowing your office to remain an eyesore for that long. If the people in charge of graffiti removal for the City won’t do it, then she should do it herself. She claims that she hired a private contractor to do just that, so why is it still there as of the week of March 3rd?

We, as a community, need to be on top of graffiti and remove it as quickly as possible. Once the vandals realize that their targeted locations will be cleaned expeditiously, they’ll be more likely to take a pass on tagging them.