Why Local Leaders Can’t Seem to Clean the Graffiti Off Portland
“Once you take your foot off the gas, you’re screwed.”
“After Sam left, we had no advocate…”
[Excerpt from Willamette Week Article.]
Mayor Ted Wheeler tapped senior adviser Sam Adams to lead the anti-graffiti efforts. Before Adams was mayor, he worked for Vera Katz, who hated the stuff.
“Vera infected me with OCD about graffiti and utility pole posters,” Adams tells WW. “That infection has only grown over the years.”
Adams clashed with Hardesty over graffiti strategy. Adams wanted tougher penalties for defacing traffic safety signs, but Hardesty disagreed, Adams said. In October 2022, the mayor moved the graffiti program to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.
Months earlier, Wheeler had declared an emergency to create the Public Environment Management Office, or PEMO, and vested it with the authority to erase graffiti in the Central Business District. Staff at BPS collects complaints and does cleanup, but Wheeler’s PEMO acts as a sort of SEAL team, swooping in on trash and graffiti when conditions get really bad.
As part of the push, Adams engaged Watts, who says he went to work without a contract because time was of the essence. Watts and his team cataloged all the graffiti downtown and identified 23,345 tags.
Watts’ firm spent five months pressure washing, scrubbing and painting, and got that number down to 7,189.
And it would have stayed that way if the city had kept its foot on the gas. But shortly after the holidays, Portland downshifted, Watts says. Part of the problem: Wheeler and Adams parted ways in January 2023 amid complaints that Adams belittled staff, including graffiti leaders.
“After Sam left, we had no advocate,” Watts says.