the balance of it is graffiti abatement and the street cleaning. the balance of the budget is a -- is related to the graffiti abatement. supervisor chu: do you know what graffiti abatement is? >> i think it is close to $15,000. many of our businesses actually do their room graffiti abatement. if we were to look at the total, it would probably be higher. it is a daily issue for us. we have some areas that are attacked every single night. businesses report it. we have the company come out and it is gone within two or three days. supervisor chu: have you noticed, or has there been conversation with, the businesses, whether they have noticed they spend less money on the graffiti abatement because the cbd is taking over? is it easier? other districts are challenged with trying to figure out how to deal with it. they are dealing with it on their own. they have to respond within 30 days to the city. is it an easier thing now? >> it has definitely been easier. i serve on the citizens' advisory board and work on a separate committee for -- focused on graffit

force for we have to remember we are not painters we abate graffiti. we are abaters not painters. that out of the way and keep moving. >> how many of these do you do a day? how many poles we do a day? >> yeah. >> depends on the location. may be 20. >> do you like working with the team? >> yes because i'm a people person. i like being outside and interacting with the public and i like the response we get especially from the good job we do in the community. >> goodbye. >> welcome to "culturewire." for the past year, the arts commission has been participating in the city's effort to revitalize the central market street corridor. in addition to the thursday arts market and are in store front, the art commission recently launched the artery project. for the next year, the artery project will bring energy and excitement to market street, recalling the st.'s heyday as san francisco's vibrant and bustling theater district. >> un.n plaza during business hours seize hundreds of passing office workers and students, but the activity winds down at 5:00 every day. theater productions bring some

a lot of what we do, whether it is abating graffiti, picking up trash, filling pot holes, improves someone's quality of life. when a neighborhood group is getting together to see how they can improve the conditions in their neighborhood, it is hard for them to do so if they do not know what the crime looks like in the neighborhood, where they have the legal dumping problems. community groups can then have real data to base their solutions on. it is very empowering in that respect. it can help us avoid a lot of cumbersome public record requests, rather than waiting for people to come to us to pull data out, we push it to them. they do not have to come and ask us for it, which for us to track it down. it is available for them to use. and finally, the mayor made reference to this, there are some leads that we have that if we were to try to address them would be costly and time- consuming and may not even yield the results we want. a small example, mechanical streets weeping. we have them go around the city and we have people move their cars in order for us to be able to clean their streets. for

[inaudible] the graffiti we abate everything is coming up to the areas now. >> i'm willing to take it on. i think -- >> you are telling me you are ready for this? >> i think so. >> okay. >> there you go. >> all right. >> all right. >> ready to do it. let's go. >> want to get the gray signses this over here and the garbage can and normally we don't do private property since it's on the corridor route you can come with me we will use black. >> we had a lot of changes in the graffiti unit. we do private property if someone moved we remove it and send it to the attorney's office and they take appropriate action. >> damage their property there. it's important to write the color in case they want to say what part of our house you abated the graffiti on. >> using your safety glasses the gloves. >> you got it. >> you know some places we gashi, people appreciate that. you know, a lot of timeses they say, thank you. >> the time where it's visible. a lot of people put it on the ground. >> i like when tourists come and say, you do this for your city and you get paid for that? >> we use the [inaud

force for we have to remember we are not painters we abate graffiti. we are abaters not painters. get that out of the way and keep moving. >> how many of these do you do a day? how many poles we do a day? >> yeah. >> depends on the location. may be 20. >> do you like working with the team? >> yes because i'm a people person. i like being outside and interacting with the public and i like the response we get especially from the good job we do in the community. >> goodbye. of the "fred friendl seminars" at the columbia university graduate school of journalism. casablanca cruise lines has purchased two majestic ocean liners. they are retrofitting them to create basically a luxury playground on the seas for active seniors and anyone else who might enjoy a return to yesteryear on the ocean. betsy, you are the ceo of casablanca cruise lines. sounds like an exciting opportunity? - so far. - tapper: so far. one little wrinkle: the ships that you purchased were not new. there's a little bit of asbestos in them. you need to have it removed. in the united states you can have the two ships st

think probably many neighborhood commercial areas face the same issues with maintenance and graffiti abatement. the total budget you have for the sidewalk beautification order is about 200,000. -- $200,000. how does that work with the graffiti abatement project? >> included in the budget is our police officer security. during the summer this year, we went to seven days a week. we have police officers from 10:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. that is a big portion of it. the dollar amount,

without that, we could not have done any of the work that we have done today, including graffiti abatement. next to those news stands, there is a lot of graffiti on the sidewalk. we have been so good about graffiti removal, the graffiti artists are frustrated and are now doing it on parking meters and utility poles. this is randy. he cleans the street 7 -- six days a week. he is part of a program. we had hired two cleaning companies to work with us. i started working with salvation army and other organizations to ask if we could use their workers. we found the jericho project, which takes first-time drug offenders, and puts them through a project and work for private companies. they have been great. the first love letter we got on cleaning after five years. do you get many love letters? it will be in the noe valley voiced this month. with all those dogs thi, you can imagine what kind of mess he has. supervisor maxwell: and he is with? >> khadr project. first-time drug offenders. -- the and jericho project. -- the jericho project. the second thing we did was plant trees. we worked with frie

graffiti abatement and street and walk. many projects come in and they are both categories not to worry about that. the point is that there are a lot of things we don't fund. in our workshop somebody wanted to know if we were talking about a bathroom in a park. we don't do that. it's an object that should come out of an agency's budget. it's not something you that you can involve the community. community will not build a bathroom or maintain a bathroom for 5 yeeshs. they might but that was not the application submitted. >> let's talk about briefly the match because that has to be that requirement has to be met before we talk about the scoring. the point of the match the reason the program was retooled and called the community challenge grant is the idea is to encourage neighborhoods to value themselves and their own work. the grant is unique in the city and in many other cities in that we have placed a dollar value on your volunteer time of 14 dollars an hour. you are allowed to include your volunteer time as the match. as

force for we have to remember we are not painters we abate graffiti. we are abaters not painters.et that out of the way and keep moving. >> how many of these do you do a day? how many poles we do a day? >> yeah. >> depends on the location. may be 20. >> do you like working with the team? >> yes because i'm a people person. i like being outside and interacting with the public and i like the response we get especially from the good job we do in the community. >> goodbye.