PORTLAND, Oregon — It's been nearly a month since crews officially started to paint over graffiti along Portland highways, but the work is far from being complete.
Earlier this year, Oregon lawmakers granted the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) $20 million to clean up Portland's highways. ODOT split the funds four ways: $12 million will be split evenly to clean up graffiti, trash and homeless camps, leaving $8 million allocated towards preventative measures.
ODOT contracted Portland Graffiti Removal LLC to help them with the work. Don Hamilton with ODOT told KGW crews started their efforts in the middle of April. Since then, they've painted over 1,100 sites, though taggers have already hit locations they've cleaned up.
"Everybody in this community knows that this is a problem," said Hamilton. "We are working very much with police, and police have teams out there to try to bring these taggers to justice."
KGW was able to tag along with a Portland Graffiti Removal crew cleaning up graffiti. They said they come across homeless people, trash, needles and drugs.
"If it helps me to get my job done, I'll clean some stuff up sometimes, but I'm not trying to get any diseases or anything like that," said Jack Berryman with Portland Graffiti Removal.
Occasionally, Berryman said he sees taggers.
"They usually are out at night time, not really out in the daytime for the most part. But when they do, they just stare at us — give us dirty looks, and then go away," Berryman said. "They don't do a whole bunch, they just tell us, 'don't buff our stuff,' pretty much."
The $4 million for graffiti cleanup will be good until June of next year. After that, Hamilton said lawmakers will need to consider adding additional funds for graffiti cleanup to ODOT's next budget.
"Everybody, I think, wants to make sure that we can do what we can to stop this and clean up the community," Hamilton said.
As for the tagged exit signs, Hamilton said they often have to replace them instead of cleaning them up, and they're not cheap. One sign can run up to $8,000 each.