PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – The Oregon legislature passed a budget amendment last month, giving ODOT a $20 million boost to tackle graffiti and littering and clean up homeless camps.
But the Governor hasn’t signed the bill yet (a spokesperson from her office tells us April 17 is the deadline), and those hired to paint over graffiti have had to delay their operations.
ODOT hired Portland Graffiti Removal to paint over tagged areas along the major state highways in our region. Owner Robert Barrie told Fox 12 that their contract states work would start no later than April 1.
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Barrie hired several workers to start on that date.
“All of these guys, they put in their two-week notice at their other jobs, or one-week notice, because we were scheduled to go April first,” Barrie said.
But ODOT’s scheduled start date came and went, and the Governor still hadn’t signed the legislation.
That means the employees haven’t had work for the past couple of weeks, and Portland Graffiti Company is paying to retain them.
“It’s not like we can do the work prior to those funds being allocated and then kind of back charge to when we start,” Barrie said. “It is very frustrating, and it’s frustrating for those guys too, because we told them ‘hey April first’, and they were like ‘hey we’re ready to go, oh no it’s been delayed, we don’t know when.’”
ODOT Spokesperson Don Hamilton told Fox 12 he is not concerned with the delay, and he believes Portlanders will start seeing changes right away after the funding is approved.
“This is really the biggest investment that we’ve seen from the legislature in this issue,” he said. He hopes the legislature will pass more funding specifically targeted toward graffiti and litter removal in the next legislative session.
“We hear all the time from the public that these are an eyesore and we want to get rid of them, we’re going to do what we can to make sure these aren’t a problem in the community,” Hamilton said. “Once this is ready, I’m confident that this company will get out there and get started within days.”
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Barrie says each technician can cover around 7,500 square feet a day, and he believes it’ll take only a few months to make it through the sections of highway that ODOT has assigned them.
“We’re here, we want to get started, we’ve wanted to get started for the last couple of weeks now,” he said. “They would be working today if there was money.”
Barrie also noted that while the initial round of work would be complete in a few months, they will likely then have to start the process of re-covering some of the sites that have been re-tagged.
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