MUSCATINE, Iowa — If the Muscatine City Council adopts a plan presented Thursday night by the mayor’s Graffiti Mitigation Committee, property owners would be issued fix-it tickets and possible citations for graffiti left on their properties.

“It is the duty of the owner of the property … to at all times keep property free of graffiti,” Kas Kelly of Muscatine Safe Streets told the Council.

Kelly is a member of the committee that Mayor Dick O’Brien appointed March 13 in response to an increase in graffiti within the city. City officials say some of it is never — or not quickly — removed by property owners.

“We do not intend to victimize the victim. Our goal is to get rid of graffiti. Everyone within the city limits will have the opportunity to call Safe Streets and ask for help,” Kelly said.

 Muscatine Police Chief Gary Coderoni is chairman of the committee, which includes 4th Ward Councilman Bob Bynum and about a half dozen citizens.  They have been meeting for the past month to discuss the best possible way to thwart long-lasting graffiti issues.

Their proposed plan includes: 

* The Muscatine Police Department or Building Department being notified of graffiti and issuing tickets to property owners.

* Property owners being issued fix-it tickets and having 10 days to clean up/ paint over graffiti. At that time the owner would also receive a brochure from Muscatine Safe Streets and Keep Muscatine Beautiful volunteer programs, stating that they can help with volunteers and limited colors of paint and supplies. They would not be able to help if the graffiti was on brick because they do not have supplies to fix that surface.

*Officials checking the property after 10 days and scheduling court

dates and assessing fines for owners who have not cleaned up graffiti.

* After the court date, officials would check the property again and if the graffiti still exists the owner would get a second ticket and an increased penalty and the process would start over again giving 10 days to correct the nuisance.

The committee also suggests that if the vandal is caught he or she would be required to clean up the graffiti.

Linda Hinman owns the brick building at 1029 Hershey Ave., the former Electric Graffitti tattoo shop, which has been vandalized with apparent Latin King gang graffiti. Hinman winters in Arizona and returned last week to a flood of complaints about the graffiti.

“I am not in agreement with the fact that I as the victim would be penalized for this happening to my building.,” She said this morning. She feels as though she’d  be victimized three times if such an ordinance passes: once by having the distasteful graffiti done on her property,  again by being ticketed and a third time by having to pay to clean it up.

She said she has contacted someone to remove the graffiti and it should be gone soon.

“It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do,” she added.

Hinman said graffiti cleanup would be a good project for inmates in the Muscatine County Jail and that Council should consider options other then re-victimizing the victim.

 Kelly told the Council that the goal is to get rid of the graffiti and get it painted over before the vandal decides to strike again.

“The paint may not match,” said Kelly, who would be one of the cleanup volunteers. “I have never, ever, ever claimed I am a painter by trade. It will not be pretty.“

Council members had some questions about liability of the volunteers and another part of the plan that was proposed regarding persons in possession of graffiti implement objects. The committee hopes to see a code established allowing officials to charge persons on public property who are suspected of graffiti with possession of objects that could be used while making graffiti, even if that person hasn’t been caught committing a crime. Those objects include aerosol paint, broad tipped markers, etching equipment or any other item capable of leaving a visible mark on a natural or man-made surface.

At-Large Councilman Bob Howard said he didn’t like the idea because those items could be too basic.

“A lot of laws and ordinances are nothing but a tool,” Kelly said.

Coderoni said if a person is in a park at 10 p.m. in possession of lots of spray paint that he or she could be cited because that would be recognized as trouble.

The Council will consider the input from the committee and move forward with a formal plan soon. Meanwhile, Kelly has asked the public to remove any graffiti on private property by April 25, what she has declared a city-wide paint-out day. Property owners in need of assistance can call Kelly at the Safe Streets office, 563-264-6062.