Letter to the Editor

READER wants GRAFFITI MORE EFFECTIVELY addressed

Regarding Laura Phelps' article "North Las Vegas City Council discusses how to deal with graffiti" in the Dec. 18 edition of North Las Vegas View ...

And there it was early Christmas Eve morning, our neighborhood filled with Christmas lights and fresh graffiti.

While my family does not live in North Las Vegas, we border it in what is considered the second-most heavily tagged sector in Southern Nevada. Like most of Southern Nevada's municipalities, clearly several points are missing from the North Las Vegas' recent public discussion about effectively deterring graffiti.

The reactive approaches - community service requirement, parental responsibility - should be increased as many suggested. Consider town hall meetings to elicit ideas; think about evolving Neighborhood Watch into something greater or expanding the use of police volunteers.

While I contact Neighborhood Services nearly once a week on average, over the past 12 years, it was our late dog Max who was responsible for alerting us to more than 24 tagging incidents in our neighborhood, of which 19 were either arrested or cited. Once was I thanked - by a 911 operator - for our efforts, but never have I been asked for input by anyone official.

There was one idea presented at the meeting that was ludicrous: "Change the city code to spell out that it is the responsibility of the property owner to clean up the graffiti." Much of the public are victims to this illegal scourge, and if the city needs more resources, think about what the responsibilities of the municipality are in protecting the citizens.

While people were righteously shocked about a Red Rock site with graffiti last year and more recently, a trail in Henderson, we endure it every day, the elected officials tackling it with mostly reactive, disjointed measures, and graffiti continues to thrive.

- Martin Dean Dupalo

Las Vegas