City organizes clean-up at Whitehorse Skate Park after amendment banning graffiti

As part of the city's new approach to graffiti, Whitehorse staff and community members were out cleaning up the skate park on Saturday. 

Last month, the city voted on amendments that banned graffiti on the skate park's surface, rails and ramps. Those areas — along with public kiosks and areas not visible to the public — that had previously been "exemption zones" for graffiti. 

The city put up a large wall for graffiti artists to spray paint on instead.

The city also created a two-person "graffiti task force" to manage graffiti in the city this summer. Luke Henderson is on that task force and was at the skate park on Saturday morning helping remove paint from the bowl.

He says although graffiti is a form of art, things were getting out of hand at the skate park.

"The gratuitous amount of obscenities and offensive things in the bowl itself," he said. "We've seen lots of complaints from even the people who use the bowls. Because this is a family area after all, right?"

Henderson said obscenities and hate speech will likely still be a problem, but it will be removed if the task force finds it or receives complaints.

Henderson and city staff were joined by children, parents and other residents for the cleanup.

Joe Zucchiatti, president of the Skate for Life Alliance in Whitehorse, says the most important reason to remove spray paint from the bowl is for safety. When the bowl is painted, he says, it becomes slick for skaters.

"I know that this particular spot," Zucchiatti said of an area he was scrubbing, "people are hitting it for tricks regularly. As soon as it got painted, they couldn't land anything."

Zucchiatti said he hopes the cleanup will last, but he predicts graffiti will still pop up on the bowl and need to be removed regularly.

"But, you know, at the same time, the kids who both skateboard and who do use the park [for graffiti] have been pretty respectful about keeping it off the skate surfaces. So, you know, hopefully, we can get them to continue that."

Reducing graffiti is part of the city's strategy to enhance the downtown core between 2022 and 2024.

The graffiti task force is funded by the Crime Prevention and Victim Services Trust Fund, and will last through August. The total cost of both positions is around $40,000.