Santa Maria to get help tackling vandalism with new graffiti removal truck

Vandalism can lead to felony charges, but that hasn’t stopped many people in Santa Maria where graffiti has become a common eyesore for people in the city. “We see it pretty often in our neighborhood. Not too long ago, we saw people doing graffiti and it just looked awful,” said Santa Maria resident Jose Merino. For staff at Santa Maria’s Recreation and Parks Department, cleaning up the graffiti is a daily task and has increased in the past several years. I joined Senior Park Services Officer Ruben Ramirez on a ride-along to see some of the areas they’ve cleaned up. Ramirez tells me that removing all graffiti is a priority, but gang-related graffiti is addressed urgently. “We try to get it off as soon as we can. The unfortunate part is, if we do get it off within two hours, even a couple of days, the graffiti is back up and we’re back out here doing the same thing over again,” Ramirez said. Clean-up efforts can be time-consuming. “It is very tedious. Right now, we just have a standard pressure washer,” Ramirez said. But with recent city council approval, Ramirez’s department is excited about the purchase of a $180,000 graffiti...