Graffiti vandal hits town with green paint

Love. Revolt. Big Up. Illegible green lines.

This was the talk of the town after a graffiti vandal left the green spray painted marks on Whitefish stores and property.

Last week, these cryptic messages were spray painted on the Post Office, Safeway and Ben Franklin buildings, as well as a Hummer H2. Clean up will cost at least $665 and a lot of time to property owners and taxpayers. A sandblaster was even required to remove the graffiti on at least one building.

Police believe the same person or group of people was responsible for all the paint, as the incidents took place on the same night, with the same color paint. One empty spray paint can was recovered near the Glacier Medical building, and is being checked for fingerprints.

Whitefish Police detective Roger Bergstrom said that often this type of vandalism will continue until the perpetrators are caught.

Jedi White, the owner of the H2 that was painted with what she described as green squiggles, was dismissive of the incident.

"It was just some kids," she said. "It could have been a lot worse."

White said it cost $165 to remove the squiggles.

According to Postmaster Ken Dauenhauser, the messages on the side of the post office had to be removed with a sand blaster, because they had soaked into the brick.

The sand blasting came to $300.

A manager at Safeway had not yet gotten an estimate for covering writing on the side of their building, but next door, at the Ben Franklin hardware store, they expected to pay $200.

"At least this time we got 'love,'" said Pat Fellers, owner of Ben Franklin. Four years ago, she said, the graffiti messages on the side of her building weren't so benevolent. -Paul Peters