In its ongoing effort to battle graffiti and tagging city officials will host Keep Covington Clean Day Sept. 12.

Karla Slate, the city’s community relations coordinator, is on the four member staff committee that has been working to organize the event.

Earlier this year, Slate explained, the Covington City Council had its annual retreat and “the topic of graffiti came up so they directed city staff” to work on the issue.

“We started having meetings and coming up with ideas for things (residents) can do,” Slate said. “We started researching what other cities do and one of the things that is successful is providing graffiti clean up kits.”

Staff decided to go one step further and created the Clean Covington Day.

“It’s really intended to get the community out to clean up graffiti,” Slate said. “It will also give residents an inside look at what it takes to clean it up for our public works department as well as give them public service opportunity in the meantime.”

Slate said she’s gotten quite a few calls already from residents interested in participating.

One woman told Slate that she planned to bring her youngsters with her because “she wants them to see how what they do as adolescents has an impact on the entire city and maybe by helping to clean it up they will never be vandals.”

Cleaning up graffiti is the best deterrent, according to Covington Police Officer Jason Stanley, who told the Reporter in April that the reason someone tags or spray paints is because they “want people to see it.”

“The biggest deterrent is quick removal,” Stanley said. “The motivation behind the graffiti offender is recognition. If they realize that it’s going to be there for a day then it’s going to be gone then the motivation is going to be decreased.”

With the Clean Covington Day in conjunction with the availability of the graffiti removal kits the hope of city staff and police will discover how easy yet powerful it is to get rid of the problem.

Clean Covington Day starts at 9 a.m. at the new maintenance building on 180th and 256th next to the Fire District 37 station. Breakfast will be served.

“One of our officers will spend five to 10 minutes talking about graffiti, why it happens, how to report it and how the police look for suspects and apprehend them,” Slate said. “Then our maintenance supervisor Dan Wesley will be giving a demonstration on how to remove graffiti. We’ll provide all of the supplies. Depending on how many people we have, we’ll dispatch teams out to specific locations where there is graffiti and spend time cleaning it up.”

If the provided supplies don’t do the trick, then one of the city’s maintenance staff can come out and pressure wash graffiti or tags away, and if that still isn’t enough Slate said, then it’ll be painted over.

Supplies have been donated by Home Depot, Sherwin Williams and Auburn-based Alpine Markins, Slate said, plus Walmart gave the city a $1,500 grant. Some of that money has been spent to supplement the donated items.

“We don’t have to use too much of (the grant),” Slate said. “We could probably stretch that money out for a whole year and hopefully next year they will renew it.”

Slate said the hope is that everyone will be back in town from vacations since school is supposed to start by then and even if the Kent School District teachers go on strike “everyone should be back from their vacations and will hopefully be free that weekend.”

For more information log onto the city’s Web site, www.ci.covington.wa.us, or send an e-mail kslate@ci.covington.wa.us or call 253-638-1110, ext. 2234.

Another option is to stop by City Hall to pick up a graffiti removal kit. Residents are asked to fill out a form with information about where the graffiti is that they plan to clean up among other things so that can be passed onto the Covington Police.

Reach Kris Hill at khill@covingtonreporter.com or (425)432-1209 ext. 5054.