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 ord

so, i'm wondering when i was in a graffiti advisory board, several of us tried to get some special attention paid to those things as well as glass etching. i don't know if glass etching has gotten worse or not, but particularly graffiti on concrete sidewalks and curbses and trees. i'm wondering if perhaps officer parerra [speaker not understood] can speak to that if any special efforts are made to address those. >> i'll speak to it. when we invoked the blight ordinance, we recently had it changed. we have now put that -- we were doing it as a department. we were doing the abatement for the sidewalks. sidewalks are actually private property. so, we have now changed that and put the property owner responsible for the graffiti on the sidewalks. that may be why you're seeing a slight increase. the department was doing that all over the city. as resources dwindled, and we recognized we were already noticing the property owner put private graffiti on their property, we added the sidewalks. so, that may be a reason why you're seeing that increase. and graffiti on trees, we recognize that as a probl

i'd like to introduce jim with the san francisco graffiti advisory board. he will be the phil donahue of the crowd. hand you the microphone. >> i don't hand it over, i hold onto it. so, i believe the way we were planning on doing this, we had some written questions that we will be reading off and the panel will be answering them. i'll also be taking questions from the audience. so, if anybody has a question, feel free to raise your hand. allow me to get time to get over there to get to you. should we start off with a red question or a question from the audience? >> i'll do the question. some of these questions -- is the mic on? okay. some of the questions are directed toward a specific speaker, others aren't. so, if it's directed towards a specific speaker, i'll ask you. if not, whoever can answer it [inaudible]. this is a general question so it's not geared towards any particular speaker. if anyone feels like chiming in, that would be great. how do you go about securing funding for the various graffiti programs? do you use grants, tax assessments, et ceter

going to take another question from gideon, gideon cramer, former member of the san francisco graffiti advisory board. and let's hear what you have to ask. >> this is a follow-up question for larry. we were talking about concrete sidewalk graffiti and curbs. and your response was that that is private property or the owner -- the property owner is responsible. a number of my neighbors had asked me when they had graffiti said where do we go? technically you're responsible. so, what am i going to do? they ended up -- i said, do not paint over it. it's got to be power washed. you have to use -- that can be really expensive. they went and painted over it. and now it looks worse than the graffiti. i see it all over the city that a tag is painted over with brown paint, with whatever is available. and then it becomes a real problem because it's really hard to remove it then. so, i think that -- my thought about it, i know dpw doesn't have the financial resources, but realistically i think sidewalks even though they're kind of that nebulous gray area where technically they're owned by the property owner, but

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 si

and i'd like to introduce jim merkasio with the san francisco graffiti advisory board. he will be the phil donahue. i hand you the microphone. >> i'll hold onto it. i believe the way we're planning to do this, we have some written questions that we will be reading off and the panel will be answering them. i'll also be taking questions from the audience. so, if anybody has a question, feel free to raise your hand. allow me to have time to get over there to get to you. should we start off with a red question or a question from the audience? >> i can read one. >> okay. >> okay. and some of these questions on the list -- is the mic on? okay.

first of all, i would like to say my name is rebecca delgado and i'm a board member of the graffiti advisory as well as a volunteer for dpw. i've been a volunteer with dpw for about 10 years and a board member for about sick years. and i am actually here to nominate -- oh, before i say that, i wanted to thank all of you, by the way, for being here today for joining the conference. i'd like to thank all the people, all the organizations responsible for putting together the international conference. and thank you for visiting our city. i hope you had a great time while you're here and you will continue to explore the city this weekend. you are very lucky because we have a great, great weather. it was winter not too long ago. i think the last 24 hours, and today it's borderline between spring and summer. so, you guys lucked out on the weather. i nominated the academy university because of its commitment, long-time commitment and dedication to the beautification of san francisco. they, too, have been involved as a partner with dpw going on 10 years. they have supported the community clean team.