Winning the game of tag

Heading out for an afternoon of talking with voters, but wanted to take a quick minute to talk about a story I saw in today’s Boston Globe, and a problem Clinton — along with almost every other town in the region — is facing.

Graffiti.

The Globe story talks about the Longfellow Bridge, which is nearing the end of a five-year, $300 million reconstruction project. It won’t even reopen until next spring, and yet it’s still already a popular target for graffiti “tagging.”

Read the story and you’ll see how graffiti isn’t just a Clinton problem.

“At high-profile pieces of public property, including the Longfellow Bridge,” the story reads, “the struggle to keep ahead of graffiti never ends.”

Obviously, it’s a struggle here too. Last week, work crews from the Worcester County Sheriff’s Department cleaned up graffiti in town, spray-painting bridges and underpasses dark gray, in many ways covering up ugliness with ugliness.

We’ll never be able to stop vandals from being vandals (the photos above were taken today, so some of these people were right back at it). Increased enforcement helps, but Boston has four full-time employees whose only job is to fight graffiti vandalism. We don’t have that luxury here. What about complementing police efforts with something more creative?

The Globe story also quotes Nate Swain, a street artist from Charlestown who works at Artists for Humanity, a nonprofit group that teaches art to low-income and underserved children.

What if we partnered with a similar organization and gave our local youth and artist community a chance to express themselves on property that’s otherwise routinely defaced by vandals? In the street art hierarchy, murals often come out on top. Organizing an effort to improve local artistic expression and head off graffiti would be a low-cost, high-return proposition that could let our police focus on other more important things, while keeping our public infrastructure looking beautiful. (And it might give Profile Rock a much-needed break.)

Who knows? Maybe one of these groups might want to settle down here, and turn a vacant property into its headquarters, much like Artists for Humanity did in South Boston. Their program is so popular, in fact, that they’re expanding to accommodate more youth.

“Artists for Humanity is building a new generation of Boston-based artists and creative thinkers, and this expansion project will allow them to provide even more opportunities for our youth to become involved in creative work environments,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said in announcing the expansion last year. “Their innovative approach combines arts and culture with STEM curriculum to give our young people the skills to think critically and obtain well-paying careers in the future.”

The bottom line is that we can learn a lot from the communities and organizations around us. If you elect me to the Board of Selectmen on June 12, I will chase down every creative, affordable solution I can find to help make Clinton better.

I’m out and about today talking to voters and seeing how they think we can make our town better. If you see me, say hello. And if you need a sign, hit me up. Happy to drop one off.