When John Swan & Co Ltd owner Janette Armstrong got to work at her engraving business yesterday she found some freshly painted tagging - a graffiti writer's personalised signature - across her car park wall in Bath St.
The new black tagging was sprayed over some older red tagging painted about a month ago.
She usually paid about $500 to have three coats painted to cover the tagging but had stopped recently because the freshly painted wall attracted more tagging.
"It's devastating,'' Mrs Armstrong said.
The "ugly'' tagged wall was an unpleasant welcome for her customers.
"It reflects badly on your business ... I'd rather be engraving other people's stuff than other people engraving mine.''
A digitally printed company sign in the car park had also been tagged and would cost about $500 to fix.
She had owned the business for 18 months and tagging was more prevalent this year.
No business in Bath St was safe. A wall of Strawberry Sound was tagged by someone standing on the roof of The Strictly Coffee Company.
It seemed painting over graffiti was part of business ownership in Dunedin, Mrs Armstrong said.
Security floodlights once illuminated her car park but it attracted people to the area to drink alcohol on weekend nights.
She turned the lights off to stop it being "party central'' and fewer people congregated to drink in the area but there were still empty bottles to put in the recycling bin every Monday.
"We are trying to do our best.''
Dunedin City Council needed to do more to stop taggers, she said.
"As it is such a problem in Bath St, I thought we would have got some support from the council.''
Council events and community development manager Joy Gunn said the council was committed to working closely with private property owners and small businesses to help them address graffiti vandalism problems.
"Where there is a significant problem, we can assist with graffiti removal and monitoring of the area. We can offer advice and some basic products for graffiti removal.''
Graffiti incidents needed to be reported to police and providing information on who might be responsible was important, she said.
Graffiti was an ongoing issue for many urban communities and the council was doing its best to respond to manage the issue but needed information from the community.
