New Art Exemption Guidelines In The Works As City Cracks Down On Graffiti
Posted January 11, 2011 1:32 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
As the city continues its “heightened” crackdown on graffiti, officials are in the midst of revising exemption guidelines to help determine which paintings are worth preserving and which ones should be removed from buildings.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder that’s why it’s very subjective,” Elizabeth Glibbery of the city’s Municipal Licensing and Standards Division said. She’s in charge of the graffiti blitz.
“We’ve had this in the works since 2008-09. The councillors identified the need to have better clarity around what’s graffiti and what’s an art mural.”
Cleaning up graffiti was part of former mayor David Miller’s Clean and Beautiful City program and the effort has intensified under Mayor Rob Ford.
“It doesn’t differ so much but the intensity is different,” Glibbery said of Ford’s initiative, which started Dec. 9.
Right now, officials are focusing on tags and unauthorized art scrawled on buildings on main streets.
Businesses are handed a notice of violation and if the owner doesn’t comply the city cleans up the paint and hands over the bill. If the owner wants to preserve the art on their wall they can apply for an art exemption.
“We probably present, on average, maybe 15, 20 [exemption applications] a year,” Glibbery said.
The applicant states their case for saving the art and a presentation is made to their community council, which ultimately decides whether the paint will remain in place.
Applications are currently on hold as the city tries to nail down exactly what constitutes art versus graffiti (Read the current graffiti by-law guidelines here).
Andrew Lee’s family runs Dawes Fish ‘n Chips on Dawes Road south of St. Clair Avenue East and the north wall of their building has been a favourite spot for gang members to leave their tags, he said. He worked out a plan with some local high school kids to paint a mural on the wall in exchange for free food from the restaurant.
He was surprised when the city contacted him about it.
“The letter said I need a permit for the mural and I said ‘Why? It’s our wall, it’s not anything that offends anybody. It’s just [an underwater theme] with fishes and bubbles and seaweed.’ It looked a lot better. It brought some colour to the neighbourhood,” he said.
It turns out he needed a permit to put up the mural. The permits cost $29.94 per square meter at a minimum fee of $209.47.
Glibbery said the art mural exemption her department grants provides an exemption from the graffiti by-law, but the business still needed to obtain a permit for the mural through the buildings division, “and that’s what they were probably directed to do.” The fish and chips shop did receive an art exemption in 2008; however Lee said he wasn’t aware of that. He said he never filed any paperwork.
After shelling out about $400 to help the kids with the mural, Lee decided he didn’t want to wade through the red tape and ended up painting the wall white. Tags have started showing up again, he said.
Dawes Fish n’ Chips. Image from Google Streetview
While Lee was frustrated by the experience, Lana Frado, executive director of Sound Times, a community mental health agency on Parliament Street south of Dundas, said the art exemption process was “easy”.
The organization applied after receiving a complaint about a mural painted on its front fence, which depicts the agency’s members.
Sound Times mural on Parliament Street.
“It was quite simple. [The city] sent me a form … I had to make the case as to why it was a mural. I sent in the documents. They presented it at some committee or council meeting and then they notified me in writing that we’d been approved,” she said. “No fuss, no muss. It was easy.”
- Is there art worth fighting for in your neighbourhood, or paint you’d like to see removed? Contact us and let us know about it here.
