my name is larry -- and i'm chair of the san francisco graffiti advisory board and deputy director of operations, department of public works. welcome to zero graffiti

international conference. (applause) this morning you will hear from several great speakers and i hope that you are all ready for a fantastic conference. there's a lot to get from today. i want to be brief and move things along. mayor ed lee could not be here this morning but he is very excited about this event and prepared a welcome via video. now the honorable mayor of the city and county of san francisco mayor ed lee. >>: hello. i'm mayor ed lee. it is my pleasure to welcome you to san francisco and the first of its kind, zero graffiti international conference. san francisco is proud to be the innovation capital of the world because we believe that finding solutions to graffiti vandalism

or to solve any other challenges is driven by how successful the we embrace and encourage innovation. we continuously seek out ways to leverage new technologies, reduce cost, find efficiencies, and create meaningful public/private order 68 in the cities unification efforts. the thing today, zero graffiti for a beautiful city is one whole world can embrace. i hope that you are inspired today and throughout the conference to exchange ideas and find solutions to improve the quality-of-life in your city. thank you for your dedication and commitment to eradicate graffiti vandalism. keep up the great work and enjoy our world-class city. (applause) >>: next, i'm mayor ed lee -- ( laughter) >>: alright, i'd like to

introduce a champion of -- (indiscernible) to take advantage of san francisco's cutting edge -- to keep the city clean and green. we are delighted to have him here say a few words. (indiscernible) he also was one of our speakers that participated at the first conference of the graffiti advisory board in 2009. currently the president of the board of supervisors, and the supervisor for district 3. president david chiu. >> supervisor chiu: good morning. i am not ed lee.

on behalf of the elected officials of san francisco one walk and you, home of the world champions san francisco giants. the home of innovation. san francisco the place where we spent many years trying to fight graffiti; we have not reached the place where we are at zero graffiti. i spent a lot of time as a neighborhood activist. like many of you, i spent many hours in neighborhood cleanups, using different chemicals to deal with graffiti; as a small business owner person i heard from hundreds of merchants.

as a prosecutor i'm glad i don't recognized any of you. i recognize how difficult it is for the police and judges to prioritize. graffiti needs to be treated seriously. i want to thank those of you who were part of the 2009 program. we have an amazing rewards program; a graffiti advisory board to help us innovate. we feel that the best ideas are in the heads and the brainchilds of people around the world. how many are from california?

how many from the east coast? welcome. i hope it's a -- in the west coast. how many are from the midwest and the south? thank you for coming. how many from canada? welcome to all of you. anyone from across the pond, europe? sir i welcome you to san francisco. i want to thank all of the city staff here lead by -- the department of public works. we know that graffiti impacts every neighborhood. as the city not only does the department of public works spend

four million dollars a year but collectively we spend 20 million dollars fighting this crime. we can do better. i look forward to a fruitful conference and hopefully someday stamp out graffiti. thank you very much. (applause) >>: thank you supervisor chiu. the next person i'm going to introduce, he is and original graffiti fighter, past chair of the graffiti advisory board

and the main reason you are here. -- international conference was something he wanted to see in san francisco. mohammed -- has worked in san francisco -- responsible for dozens of community engagement programs, (indiscernible) (indiscernible) he knows every inch of this city as a steward of this beautiful, vibrant city. (indiscernible) strengthening and improving the community with partnership and support. (indiscernible) he was responsible for the first conference in 2009,

he is responsible for the ideas - welcome mohammed -- (applause) >>: thank you larry. good morning everyone. how is everyone doing today? i am so excited to join our mayor, david chiu, larry welcoming you to san francisco. (indiscernible) fighting this issue of graffiti in our city. (indiscernible) we have planned this for a while. the issue of graffiti -- not just san francisco but many other cities.

all over the world. tackling this problem. let me start by saying we have a very beautiful city, 49 square miles, second most dense city in america. (indiscernible) we have several neighborhood groups. you will hear a lot of people talk about the issue. the conference will be a great -- (indiscernible) are able to learn more and share ideas and -- in our communities. we also have -- (indiscernible) because of the giants, the 49ers, the other sports.

(indiscernible) >>: okay. it's a partnership. and finding solutions that solve problems by all of us coming together and talking about what we do. as you heard on the public works side of the table, we are responsible for regulating graffiti, enforcing the ordinances, we have a voice -- (indiscernible) we take 30,000 calls at a minimum every year. (indiscernible) it's a huge problem. i have worked for the

department for over 12 years -- (indiscernible) a problem growing more and more. (indiscernible) (indiscernible) -- something we hear ideas on. how many people were here yesterday? another way to connect. that's what this conference is. able to se -- i have new ideas as we tackle the problem of graffiti. within the department, with the help of the graffiti advisory board we have been able to tackle some of the problems in very creative ways. one that i am very proud of

is a program called -- program. it's a program where we went to the community, looked for various artists and asked them to submit their portfolios to us. (indiscernible) -- and then we met with the property owners and matched the artists to the property owners and created murals, over 38 all around the city. putting the artists and the city on the other side (indiscernible) same solution for many of the -- (indiscernible) in the last few months we're seeing now -- murals.

spending a lot of time. funding the artists program at schools. teaching that graffiti is offensive. (indiscernible) trying to teach them that san francisco is a very creative city. we want to do artwork and we'll help you; we have lots of walls around the city. we can buy your art supplies and help you. (indiscernible) the other program that we have (indiscernible) in san francisco and many other

parts of the country is what we call a graffiti watch program. we provide materials, training, allow people to take ownership of certain sections of their block and help us -- problems and -- (indiscernible) that is a very successful program. we have had over 350 people who are active in that program now. facilitate a lot of programs, tackle the problem that we have. (indiscernible) i can tell you that -- a huge percentage of the -- come from san francisco. (indiscernible)

some cases people come from other countries. (indiscernible) (indiscernible) our community and makes me very -- (indiscernible) someone who is debating -- (indiscernible) find a way to change the mind of people. (indiscernible) help to make that change. we heard from our supervisor david chiu, we spend more than 20 million dollars every year erasing graffiti. peoples property, huge amounts

of money. (indiscernible) beautiful landscape, beautiful programs. we do have a huge -- ahead of us. i am looking forward to hearing the many ideas that will be coming out of a conference today. we have experts from law enforcement. we have experts from committed to groups. we have people from all around the country, all around the world that will be here to share many of those ideas. i know at the end of the conference everyone will leave feeling more empowered. you will learn ideas that you can go back and share in your communities. also today we will be having a press conference at around 11:30 also. and the press conference is i think one that will focus on many of the areas that we struggle.

in san francisco we struggle a lot in the courthouses in terms of how to deal with vandals. sometimes in many cases they get community service. as you heard me say earlier it is the same people who are coming through 3, 4, 5 times and still doing community service. will be pushing for stiffer fines; will work closer with the judges. graffiti is a quality-of-life issue. it used to be low on the totem pole. in san francisco it is the second highest number of calls we get in terms of quality of life. the first being street cleaning issues and garbage. graffiti is now second. it is costing a lot of money. the press conference will focus on many of the types of things that we would like to see as advocates for the issue. i would like to take the opportunity to thank the -- blight for

hosting the conference. please give them a big hand. (applause) our partner, san francisco beautiful, they are here with us. (applause) and of course my colleagues at the advisory board and all of you please enjoy the conference. i will be around. i will be going to many other workshops myself. i am very interested. there is a lot to share and a lot to learn. a commitment from all of you. let's keep the movement going, let's go to other cities and fight these vandals and change their mindset and keep our city beautiful. thank you very much. (applause)

>>: thank you mohammed. you can understand his passion and his vision is why we are here. he is responsible for a lot of the programs that we are doing. i want to thank all of the city representatives and department that were here this morning. and also to have great support from the city family and community. these next two days should be very informative and i look forward to meeting with all of you. i encourage you to find current and former members of the graffiti advisory board. at this time could all the members that are present stand? okay. the rest will be here going over the course of a couple of days. thank you. (applause) just a little background. we've been working on this now for 8-9 months.

you are far off in the distance. you think you see it but you are not sure. we had a lot of struggles, a lot of growing pains. it all came together. standing up here looking at all of you i really think that we have a good conference and you are going to enjoy it. we appreciate you all being here. the last person that i want to bring up, i need to talk a little bit about him. we met him at one of his local graffiti city greets that he does. we happened to send one of our representatives to one and share the idea of doing the international conference. he was also trying to work at the same time to do something. we decided to partner together. he is passionate about what he does. he is very dedicated.

he has also been in contact with all of you over the course of six or eight months to get us to this point. drew lender (sounds like) is the chairman of the bay area nonprofit stop overblight. he shares our passion. i want to thank him for his enthusiasm to get this conference organized in at this time, drew -- (applause) >>: good morning. good morning graffiti fighters! all of you are now officially graffiti fighters, anybody who came to this organization. members of the organization are called graffiti fighters. (indiscernible) you can keep in communication after the conference

and stay in touch and not let it die today. how many psychiatrist does it take to change a lightbulb? none, . >> hi, my name is sharon, i'm the graffiti project manager for the city of edmonton, canada. for some of you weren't in my presentation earlier today i'll go through what the city of edmonton is doing in terms of programming but then go through auditing and what we do. capital city clean up brings cities together to create safe, clean inviting xhueplts and neighborhoods. our motto is a clean and safe edmonton is a

shared responsibility and we work on the premise that we can't do it alone, that we need to work as partners with the community to create solutions to graffiti vandalism and litter enforcement. just a technical point, if any of you want to ask questions, they are recording the session so they would like you to speak into the microphone and if you have any questions along the way, please feel free to ask. when did capital city clean up start? it was launched in 2005 as a pilot program focused on litter reduction in the downtown of edmonton. basically businesses were asked to adopt a block in their area and were responsible for litter clean up in that area and the program had such a huge success that they expanded the program in 2006 to include a residential component for litter pick-up. we now have over a thousand adopt a block

captains that are responsible for adopting blocks around the city of edmonton for picking up litter and they each have crews of 4 to 5 thousand people so so we have four to five thousand people picking up litter. we link nonprofit organizations with businesses and the businesses pay the nonprofit organizations $650 per summer to have the nonprofits pick up litter in the blocks surrounding their business. the advantage to that is, again, community responsibility. they're not just picking up litter at the businesses, they are picking up litter in the surrounding blocks. we have a school litter reduction program that was started that year as well so we focus on educating schools on litter pick-up in the city.

in 2008 the program was expanded to include graffiti and 2008 was when our by law was amended requiringing property owners it remove graffiti from their property or face a $250 crime. the one success from our program was the council at that time looked at the idea that we can't hold citizens responsible if we're not responsible ourselves, so they created our management program at that time. that includes bylaw enforcement as well as civic clean up and support for property owners. the program expanded again in 2009 to include a cigarette litter reduction program. we have a huge problem in our city with cigarette litter. we found that through our litter audits that we have done, we have a higher rate of cigarette litter in our cities compared to other cities in canada. expanded again in 2010 to include needle disposal and i

said in the other session, this is what i am escaping from in edmonton right now. yay, san francisco. so we have a snow angel program where we ask citizens to voluntarily shovel the snow off their neighbor's lawns. so these are all the programs offered by the capital city clean up program. we started in 2005 as part of the waste management branch and this past year in 2012 we were moved to the community standards branch which is where we are housed now. so we have a very strong link with our programs between the programs that we offer and the community standards or community bylaw ordinances that we're operating under. the lation that we focus in on is 14614, that is the bylaw that governs litter pick up in the city. community st