![]() their goal is to have a beautiful neighborhood and we compete with one another. “For every one of the neighborhood specialists. While this vandalism can be frustrating, “we grapple with it and we don’t give up,” she said. ![]() That’s what drives me every morning to get to work,” she said. “I chose to be here and I always wanted to be a public servant. Mendez, who is originally from Brooklyn, loves living in New Haven and said she wants it to shine. After awhile they accept it as this is the way it will be. Mendez said the tags have a “psychological cost to the residents. “Did they have to do that? Although it is a good message,” she said. On a bridge over the Mill River, next to the United Illuminating building, where people fish, someone painted “Keep it Clean.” “If they are true artists, as they claim they are, they should really focus on doing something productive and constructive.”Ī mailbox on Grand Avenue was also covered in tags. We clean it up and we provide a canvas for a new tagger,” Mendez said. “It has caused us a great deal of heartache because basically we see ourselves now as providing a canvas. Under the railroad tracks on Humphrey Street, a pedestrian tunnel is a constant source of frustration. Mendez said LCI concentrates on cleaning up the main thoroughfares first and do other streets as long as there are funds. Some residual Dapper tags are still on Wallace Street, on a bridge over the railroad track. She said sometimes it looks worse than the tags. It is supposed to be matched to the surface color, but that isn’t always the case where big patches of new paint stand out. Next in the crosshairs in New Haven are Peach and Old, taggers on the rise.ĭriving around the city, she points out where tagging has been removed by the firm hired to paint over it. She said Dapper was picked up in New York based on shared information. Mendez gives all the credit to Crespo for his interest in fighting this type of blight and for using his contacts to get results. When Mendez told her story to the Downtown Wooster Square Special District and the reimbursement coming back to New Haven, the audience of neighbors clapped. “You want somebody coming to your house and putting their initials on your house? You know, think about it from that standpoint,” Scarpellino told Lewis, according to a transcript. If he comes up short, Scarpellino said he will be back in the same position, facing charges and a court record if he can’t show he did his best to raise the money. Scarpellino then gave him approximately 21/2 more months after that to cover the remaining restitution. Starting on March 1, Lewis was told to pay a minimum of $100 per month for 20 months for a total of $2,000. In the end, he let Lewis enroll in accelerated rehabilitation for two years, but he also has to pay back the $9,200 it cost to remove his tags from around the city. Scarpellino thought she made a good point. Mendez said a tagger’s actions are “willful, intentional and something has to be done. It just doesn’t make sense,” she told him. We can beautify, do public improvements, anything else but spend it on graffiti. ![]() We would rather put the money into programs housing programs for the elderly, for the low-income. “Getting rid of graffiti is very expensive and we are just exhausted by it. In Scarpellino’s courtroom, she told the judge: It makes clear the city of New Haven will not permit the defacement or destruction of public property and will seek to prosecute graffiti artists and taggers fully,” Mendez wrote. Lewis reimburse the city for these costs sends a powerful message to other graffiti artists and taggers. She said the city budgets around $30,000 a year to take care of this nuisance. “Consequently, the city and its residents lose current and potential future tax dollars,” she wrote. Mendez said graffiti demoralizes the LCI specialists charged with enforcing the city’s anti-blight and property maintenance laws discourages investors lowers property values robs residents of pride in their city and just generally diminishes enjoyment of public property. “LCI unequivocally rejects the notion that graffiti tagging is a victimless crime,” she wrote in her letter to Investigator Rosa Vasquez in the state’s attorney’s office. She argued Lewis should not get accelerated rehabilitation, under which the charges would be dismissed if he followed stipulations set by the judge.
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