Downtown Commission seeks funding for new anti-graffiti department

Sick of seeing your neighborhood sidewalks, street signs and parks defaced but unsure where to turn? Austin’s Downtown Commission is here to help, with plans to create a new Department of Nuisance Abatement to tackle the city’s graffiti problem.

Laid out in a recommendation to City Council, the new department would reorganize the city’s disparate graffiti programs into a “centralized” task force under the purview of the Code Enforcement Department. As city of Austin staffers prepare for budget season, the Downtown Commission is asking for $2 million to fund the new program.

“Graffiti is a growing problem that has cost the Austin Parks and Recreation Department $546,000, Building Services $437,325, and TxDOT and CTRMA more than $150,000 just for central sections of MoPac Loop 1 and IH35,” reads the recommendation, which passed unanimously earlier this month. “The Downtown Austin Alliance abated 26,485 instances of graffiti and stickers/posters in 2022 … incurring a considerable cost that would have been better spent elsewhere.”

Currently, 311 calls reporting tagging of city property are routed through the Health Department, where they are then forwarded to the appropriate city department to handle individually. For private property cases, code enforcement will issue a courtesy notice that one’s building has been tagged, though commissioners say often no action is taken at all.

This is a second swing for the Downtown Commission, which penned a similar recommendation last year that failed to gain traction at City Hall. Council will now reconsider the proposal before voting on the city’s budget this August.

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