The Willow Glen Resident

Residents look to city for help in battling graffiti

Code enforcement tells them to clean it up or risk fines

By John Pancharian

Residents of a condominium complex on the outskirts of Willow Glen have to deal not only with the graffiti that constantly defaces their property but with city codes that make them liable for its cleanup.

Resident Sandra Dance said New Horizons condominiums, located off Alma Avenue near Highway 87, have suffered with graffiti since their construction back in 1985, but the severity of the problem has increased in the past four years. The carport roofs, which are visible from Highway 87, are especially vulnerable to tagging. Residents of New Horizons continue to paint over the graffiti and seek help from the city, but say they have been bounced back and forth between various agencies, none of which have offered a solution.

Meanwhile, code enforcement officials have notified New Horizons residents that they must keep the roofs clean, or face fines that begin at $250 per day and could rise to as much as $2,500 per day. Dance said New Horizons has tried hiring extra security, but to no avail.

She said residents also worry about encampments of homeless people who frequent the railroad tracks that run between the condominiums and the highway. The area is overgrown with dry weeds, and Dance believes it is only a matter of time before a stray spark from a cook-fire ignites them, threatening the 280-unit complex.

As if the problem were not complex enough, the area behind the condominiums is private property belonging to the Union Pacific Railroad. This means the San Jose Police Department does not regularly patrol it. SJPD officer John Carillo said police will respond to any problem they see in the area, and have gone there before. The tracks are not easily visible from city streets, however, and Dance said patrols have not been effective in the past. She said she has called Union Pacific and asked for their help, but was told the company has its own police and offered no further help.

"They don't go by every hour; in fact, I couldn't even swear they go by every day," Union Pacific Railroad spokesperson Mike Furtney said of the railroad police. He added the railroad cannot afford to patrol the tracks thoroughly enough to prevent graffiti and homeless encampments. "As anybody who has seen our cars go by can attest, we have a hard time keeping up just with our own graffiti."

Jamie Matthews, code enforcement supervisor, said he has sympathy for New Horizons residents but also has a job to do.

New Horizons complied with the city's first request to remove the graffiti by cleaning it up on the afternoon of July 9. By evening the area had been tagged again.

"It costs us $1,200 every time we clean the roofs, and they want us to do it daily," Dance said.

"We've tried weed abatement, we've tried the fire department, we've tried the city councilman--nobody is giving us help," Dance said, adding that she has called San Jose City Councilmember George Shirakawa Jr.'s office repeatedly but has received little response.

Dave Garrison, Shirakawa's chief of staff, said the city doesn't have jurisdiction on private property, but Shirakawa pushed to have eucalyptus trees planted along the back of the property that will eventually obscure the carport roofs.

"The property managers really need to be proactive," Garrison said, "They need to step up to the plate, so to speak."

Matthews said he has referred New Horizons to the city's anti-graffiti program, but if that does not work, the case will come back to him, and he must issue fines if need be.

Rick Stanton, head of the anti-graffiti program, said the city has only one police officer assigned exclusively to graffiti, but he sent him out to New Horizons three or four times. On one visit the officer contacted some youths in an area near the condominiums and determined they had been tagging, but while he was busy with them the carport roofs were hit.

Stanton said he is researching the possibility of putting a chemical on the carport roofs, but ultimately it is the responsibility of the landowner to keep the area clean. He said his office recently counted more than 27,000 tags in San Jose, and he has only four full-time staff.

"We're putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm," he said. "We do a good job, we're just outnumbered."

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