Volunteer Codes Committee Presentation– Allen Smith and Damalier Molina

Volunteer Codes Committee Presentation– Allen Smith and Damalier Molina

At the City of Coatesville City Council Meeting Monday, May 23, 2011

Mr. Molina,

“Some time ago we started a Code Volunteer’s Program which basically galvanized the people who were actively addressing some of the issues throughout the community. And one of the topics that the Codes Volunteer’s have always acted on and prior members before was addressing the issue of graffiti… Part of the concept that is presented tonight evolved discussions that Mr. Pawlowski had presented about a year and a half ago and seems to resurface through all these discussions and we were looking for ways of addressing in a cohesive way the issue of graffiti that would be more friendlier and rather than resorting to victimizing the victims, citing them for not removing them from the property we came up with a pilot program so we could see how successful we could be with it.

Essentially what we do is; the volunteers will of course go out and resurface, repaint the surface of buildings that have been graffitied and they will be helpful in maintaining a list of those buildings that have been painted at least once…

If the building later on is graffitied again those individuals the property owners will have to pay a fee for service. That will pay a sum to the volunteers program to cover the cost of paint and expenses for people who are volunteering to basically use their services in painting the surfaces of these properties.

Failure to comply or get involved they may have the most current option of they doing some of the volunteer work and also beyond that we’re looking at the third option that is proceeding with the issues of a citations for not removing the items from the building.

Allen had put together a video demonstration of how the program would work and also has supplementary information at his disposal in case you have any questions.”

City of Coatesville Weed and Seed Director Allen Smith:

“Good evening council and leadership, I want to thank Mr. Rawlings for coming out to our Community Policing subcommittee clean up on Penrose Lane in the city on Saturday morning and also Don and Officer Ollis, John Pawlowski, all those who are here today I thank you for that. We want to again present the Volunteer Codes Committee suggesting fee for service process.

And basically we have 6 simple steps. The Codes Committee in addition to addressing the graffiti, we want to be an information delivery service. Our clean up committees are all sweat equity right now.

In our Weed and Seed we suggest that we can be more efficient by teaching the community by information delivery of the various violations of codes that will allow the seed to better apply.

So basically the step that we will deliver information to residents about graffiti and then also we can recruit members as we go through the city delivering information because I think that the residents of the city want this. This is part of the assessments that the Weed and Seed Revitalization Plan said that the city residents want in the city.

Then the committee can notify codes, notify the codes department of frequent violators so that codes can then charge of the fee toward the committee, subcommittee and others cleanup efforts and I think that we need to recognize that Mr. Wilkinson’s department might be a part of that clean up too.

The committee could also clean properties with graffiti cleanup groups suggesting what time to end kind of this repeat type thing where it’s all sweat equity and we’re continuing to do the same work over and over.

So the owner will be notified that the volunteer services will be a onetime offer and after that it will be a fee for service.

The 4^th one is that we will continue to track and list the graffiti allowing the Codes Committee to be the eyes and ears for multiple offenders and then we could report the second offender…”

City Council President Karl Marking, “So you define the offender by the victim of the graffiti?”

Mr. Smith, “Not the victim necessarily but individuals who we happened to have identified, who have kind of resisted cleaning it up; the ones who have been unresponsive to cleaning it up.”

Mr. Marking, “I’d just be cautious of your language. Calling someone who was victimized an offender doesn’t seem to be effective.”

Mr. Smith, “There is definitely as suggestion received and we shall change that, that’s for sure.

The 6^th one is whoever the codes process should take over as Mr. Molina said. We feel that this is the opportunity for the residents to kind of get involved. This is on the heels of the assessment we’ve already talked to the residents who said they would like to see these issues addressed.

More than the city or kind of us coming down on the victim it’s more about information dissemination an invitation for people to get involved and to be able to police themselves in terms of addressing the problem of graffiti…

Again, these are suggestions we’re looking for suggestions back like Mr. Marking just gave us.”

Mr. Marking, “Have you been keeping the stats on the places that you’ve cleaned up of late of which they’re either hit again or not hit again? I’m curious about if they’re constantly being retagged or… What’s been your experience with that?”

Mr. Smith, “Well, I don’t have that information of the Community Policing Subcommittee. I can get that to you… John, unless you want to open up? I’m afraid I have been put on the spot.”

John Pawlowski, “I can answer that question to comment. I couldn’t hear what it was.”

Mr. Marking, “I was just wondering, once you guys paint the graffiti, what’s the likelihood of it being retagged or left alone? Does it get hit then again immediately or does it get left alone? Do people respect the effort that you made to clean it up?”

Mr. Pawlowski, “OK if you allow me to comment on it, I don’t want to but in on, I don’t want to but in on his presentation.

If anybody in this room has not seen an improvement on how clean Coatesville looks today compared to a year and a half, two years ago, they have been walking around with blinders on their eyes.

Luckily, I will say this; we’ve cleaned off in the past few years hundreds of places that had graffiti, mostly on garage doors. And rarely has it come back, rarely. But we are experiencing an episode of that right now up in the northeast portion of Coatesville on the underpass where we painted it. There is a little character that appears every once in a while and we don’t know who’s doing it.

I talked with a couple of leaders in the neighborhood and said hey who’s capable of this kind nice artistic graffiti and I haven’t gotten a reply yet.

Right now as I speak, this isn’t part of Coatesville but the Keehn Company on Foundry Street. There is a big long grey fence. About a week and a half ago Officer Ollis and I cleaned off a lot of graffiti. Today it’s back and worse.

 

I called the Keehn Company today and said are you part of Coatesville or Caln Township? Caln Township. So I won’t get into that right here.

But by and large, by and large people who see us clean up the graffiti some are thankful but there’s some who see us coming with paint brushes and cans go out the front door and go take a ride…

We’re concentrating on gang related graffiti and I have hundreds of pictures that I’m willing to show anybody at any moment anytime of what we have done for the City of Coatesville.

And when I say we, I’m taking about a handful of dedicated people.”

Mr. Marking, “I didn’t want to side you on this presentation, I just wanted to know if it was having an impact and it sounds like from what you’re saying that it has.”

Mr. Pawlowski, “OK so it is. I’d like to comment on this thing too. Allen, mind if I but in on your presentation? What this program has done, if you would ride around some of the back alleys in Coatesville like we do, namely Modena Alley, Modena, OK; you will see piles of trash, like it’s just unbelievable that people are willing to live with this stuff in their yards or outside their fences and live like that. I can’t understand it.

However since we’ve started this program, we take pictures and I have pictures, we take pictures of everything. I pay a lot out of pocket to have all those pictures processed. They’re not all digital photos. Because I want Coatesville to look better than what it is. However, I’ve taken pictures of trash. I’ve emailed them along with a report to Mr. Molina. Within three days a lot of that trash is gone. If it wasn’t for this program, I don’t know what to say, I can’t speculate. I just congratulate those people. I take up more time than I should, I guess. I see that thing spinning there…This program is extremely valuable for the City of Coatesville.”

Mr. Smith, “And in an effort to keep it short I have just 4 slides. So again, these are all overtures. Again this is not to attack the victim but it is an effort to try and transfer from being a sweat equity only to a door knocking information delivering committee. We want to do that above all this.”

Mr. Carnes, “Mr. Smith, “I noticed in here that the Volunteer Codes Committee is as you identified a sweat equity program that’s out there trying to assist.”

Mr. Smith, “It’s a subcommittee.”

Mr. Carnes, “Subcommittee providing that free clean up and then there’s a sort of a suggestion in here that you move to being a arm of codes with a fee attached to it. Do you have an example where somebody analyzed that and came up with a legal authority for it and maybe moving that forward as an ordinance? Wouldn’t we have to do that?”

Mr. Molina, “No, no we do not, Mr. Carnes. Let me explain what the crux of the fee is. It’s not so much a fee for the committee. It’s a fee to cover the expenses of the volunteers.”

Mr. Carnes, “I understand that but do you have an example of that could be used…”

Mr. Molina, “No, no this is our idea, everybody’s idea, not just my idea.”

Mr. Marking, “We may have to move in that direction.”

Mr. Molina, “It’s a pilot program and we want to move in that direction.”

Mr. Smith, “And all i’s need to be dotted and t’s crossed, absolutely, absolutely. And thank you for bringing this up. We will definitely address this.

Any other questions about the process or concerns?...

On the half of the city leadership we want to thank the volunteers who have dedicated and decided to participate in this committee for the beautification of our city.

I want to end by saying Carol Wieland our program Weed and Seed Manager from the Community Capacity Development Office in Washington, D.C. remarked on her trip three years ago and she just gushed over how much cleaner our city is today. We haven’t arrived we have a long way to go. But we certainly are on the way.

Thank you so much. 

Mr. Simpson, “Thank you”