Something to look forward to this New Year in North County, where mural art is already helping to solve a notorious civic problem.

A mural painted along the city’s rail line to combat graffiti along Vista’s Sprinter corridor seems to be working, and city officials hope more murals along the tracks will help erase the tagging problem.

City spokeswoman Andrea McCullough said Vista spends more than $100,000 each year to clean up graffiti on walls, utility boxes and any other blank surface that are targeted by vandals.

Bill Fortmueller, assistant director of public services, said public works crews in November used 25 gallons of paint to cover 10,000 square feet of graffiti along six miles of rail line in the city.

Despite the regular cleanup graffiti continues to spring up on fences and walls along the Sprinter tracks.

Fortmueller said the city is waiting on contracts from the North County Transit District so it can ask artists to submit proposals for several 400-foot-long murals. In addition to deterring graffiti, the artwork will give the thousands who ride the rail corridor something nicer to look at, he said.

The city has good reason to believe the murals will keep taggers away.

In January 2008, the city paid artist Jason Hailey $4,000 to create the first mural along the Sprinter line. The project was finished in February.

“It hasn’t been tagged since it’s been up,” Fortmueller said….

Read the entire North County Times article here.