Last modified: Thursday, July 9, 2009 11:57 AM CDT

City groups, volunteers work to cover graffiti in the area

By JIM GAINES, The Daily News, jgaines@bgdailynews.com/783-3242

Taylor Haney’s previous painting experience had been limited to furniture, which wasn’t much preparation for scrambling over a bridge railing Wednesday to help cover graffiti-spattered concrete slabs.

When he climbed down into the gully below the Greenways trail bridge behind Kroger on U.S. 31-W By-Pass, Haney found that five residents of Bellewood Presbyterian Home for Children had already painted over the graffiti. But he was in time to help them wrestle a Kroger shopping cart back over the railing, filled with litter they’d collected from around the graffiti.

Haney, 16, of Bowling Green said he agreed to participate in the cleanup when asked.

“It was better than what I was doing before,” he said, smiling and shrugging. Haney’s previous job had been pulling weeds.

He’s a client of the Kelly Autism Program at Western Kentucky University, which pays its clients for their work through a grant from the Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation, said program director Marty Boman.

The autism center is working with Bellewood, the city and Operation P.R.I.D.E. to do regular graffiti cleanups, and their first stop was the Greenways bridge. The state would not allow the Bellewood residents’ names to be used, or their faces photographed.

After an hour of work there, the group moved on to the back wall of Trees n Trends on Campbell Lane. Then they planned to go to the former Sav-A-Lot store on College Street, said Brian “Slim” Nash, Bellewood’s associate director of western Kentucky.

Local graffiti cleanup has gone on for years, but this is the first time Kelly clients and Bellewood residents have joined in; and the effort is better organized with help from the city and P.R.I.D.E., he said.

“The GANGS board, which I’m president of, has always taken a very primitive, guerrilla-style approach,” Nash said. They’d get some paint donated, and paint over whatever they spotted themselves, he said. Now city staff Josh Foster and Karen Foley have developed a page on the city Web site where people can report graffiti, give its exact location, and - if it’s on private property, and they’re the owners - give permission for its cleanup, Nash said.

The gully under the bridge is owned by Joe Natcher, who told Nash that it had become a teen party spot, and asked for it to be tidied up.

Just because graffiti is out of public view doesn’t mean they’ll ignore it, Nash said. Cleanups give the partiers and painters notice that they’ve been spotted, he said.

With the help of youth care counselor Sheri Hunt, the Bellewood residents carried 20 gallons of paint under the bridge - half donated by each local Wal-Mart, Nash said - and wished they’d worn long pants as they worried about snakes, bugs and poison ivy.

Bellewood residents regularly do community service projects, and all five of Wednesday’s participants were unpaid volunteers, Nash said.

“I think as a society, we underestimate the value that young people can bring to us, both in large and small ways,” he said.

Boys from Bellewood will do the graffiti cleanups every Wednesday in July, and will continue after school starts in the fall as their class schedules permit, Nash said.

Just two Kelly clients are involved at the moment, but the program hopes to involve many of the 25 autistic college students who will be doing community service work this fall, said Molly Caswell, a Western student and Kelly staff member who came with Haney.

“We hope to build this as we go,” she said.