A CASH bounty could soon be on offer for residents who report graffiti around Frankston. Frankston councillor Nathan Butler put forward the proposal at the most recent Frankston Council meeting. He said council needed to adopt a “novel” approach to combat graffiti.
“I think our council does a rather good job of addressing graffiti in the areas in which we’re responsible for. We actually spend over half a million dollars annually doing that. While I do recognize that cleaning up graffiti as quickly as possible is one of the best ways to prevent future graffiti, it is not a be-all-and-end-all solution,” he said. “What we’re looking to do is engage our community in taking on some of the responsibility of community policing – seeing if we can identify who these tags belong to and lead to a conviction. I think getting a conviction for graffiti would be a very good deterrent.”
The bounty applies for graffiti on Frankston Council-owned property. It will be paid after vandals are successfully prosecuted by council. The proposal for council officers to consider the merits of a pilot program was unanimously approved by councillors at the meeting. The motion, which also included the provision of graffiti removal kits to residents, read that council will “consider developing and trialling an Anti-Graffiti Bounty Program for a period of 12 months, in an attempt to reduce and/or prevent illegal graffiti given the increasing cost of removal on ratepayers.”
Frankston Council will refer $5000 to the 2025/26 annual budget process “to be used as the ‘bounty’ as the foundation to this new trial program to purchase anti-graffiti kits that council may give to community members at their request”. “This sum would represent the total bounty pool available and not the amount that an individual would receive for provision of information that leads to a successful prosecution,” the motion read.
Councillor Sue Baker said that more needed to be done to address graffiti in the community, and pushed for the distribution of graffiti removal kits. “I was cycling around the Seaford Wetlands at the weekend and admiring the really lovely signage. Whichever team is responsible for that they look great, with beautiful writing, but two of them have got tags on them,” she said. “I’m thinking if I had a graffiti kit in my backpack, I would stop and clean it off.”
First published in the Frankston Times – 8 April 2025