CINCINNATI -- Graffiti hit the city hard in 2017, according to Keep Cincinnati Beautiful manager Mark Antrobus. Although it's not a violent epidemic, it does hurt local businesses in ways the perpetrators might not realize.
A single tag can cost $250 to remove, he said. That cost can fall on the city, funneling taxpayer resources into cleaning up after vandals, or on private businesses such as Acsent in Northside.
"It's upsetting because they're not showing respect for our business," Acsent office manager Linda Ledermeier said. "We're a small company, we can't find good help and we're trying to keep up with everything."
Even when graffiti falls under the city's purview to remove, that removal can be slow due to limited manpower and a hierarchical set of priorities, Antrobus said. City removal services focus first on gang symbols and anti-police slogans, followed by bad language, graffiti that obscures street signs and graffiti that implies or encourages violence. Tags that are simply unsightly can linger while their higher-priority counterparts command the city's attention.
"This is worse than we've seen it in the past," Ledermeier said of the vandalism to her workplace. "We would get hit in the back of our building years ago and we'd just paint over it and not say anything, but now this is getting just really bad."
Antrobus advised that anyone who finds their private property affected by graffiti remove it as soon as possible to prevent taggers from seeing that property as a vulnerable spot.
He added that anyone who sees a vandal tagging a building, they should call 911.
