Graffiti is blight for any community. In the City of San Mateo, we get our share of graffiti to remove.  We will spend more than $60,000 a year on removing graffiti.

Our vision for the City of San Mateo is a “zero-free graffiti zone.” With limited resources to combat graffiti, we focus our attention on those structures in the public right-of-way that we own and maintain. We paint out graffiti on street amenities such as street signs, street poles, and utility boxes.

Of all the graffiti you report to the Department of Public Works, we paint over about 60% of the graffiti we find on our public-right-of-way matching the existing paint color as best we can.  We use special graffiti remover solvent on an additional 30 percent of graffiti, and 10% of our effort is spent replacing signs too badly damaged by graffiti. 

We do our best to respond to your reports of graffiti within 7 to 10 days. If you see graffiti, please contact us.

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More Information 

• Additional Graffiti Enforcement
• External Agency Graffiti Enforcement