Rather than targeting individual home owners, such a law would go after "big property owners" who are refusing to clean up, he said in an interview, after the borough council approved a $100,000 expenditure last week to get a handle on the worsening graffiti situation.

"The biggest problem that we have is not the private property owner that lives at their house — it's the delinquent property owner — or the property owner that is not living at the facility and gets fed up and doesn't want to clean it any longer," said Applebaum.

As part of a city-wide campaign in which boroughs across the island are laying out similar amounts to deal with graffiti, CDN-NDG is paying Prévention NDG to clean up and keep an eye out for graffiti over the coming year on streets identified as being especially afflicted.

Those streets are Monkland Avenue, Sherbrooke Street, Fielding Avenue, Somerled Avenue, Côte St. Luc Road, de Maisonneuve Boulevard, Queen Mary Road, Décarie Boulevard, Girouard Avenue, Victoria Avenue, Van Horne Avenue and Côte des Neiges Road.

While Applebaum and other members of the borough council favor stricter anti-graffiti legislation, he said the motion is not supported by the executive-committee of the City of Montreal. "It's not a municipal law, it's a criminal law, it's more provincial jurisdiction," he said.

"There's many things that could be done, but once again, the provincial government has to make the law stricter and has to make sure that the judge is forced to make the person who gets caught either pay an incredible fine or to do community work and make sure that they work it off and they clean up the community."

While acknowledging that graffiti artists who are caught often get sentenced to serve in different types of community program, Applebaum added that "the fines are just not severe enough to stop them from doing it." He said he "absolutely" advocates stiffer penalties, which now amount on average to a few hundred dollars.

Loyola city councillor Warren Allmand, who's district includes a stretch of Fielding Avenue that has been especially hard hit with graffit, thinks responsibility for cleaning up the mess should start with governments, because a lot of government property — like mailboxes and bus shelters — has been defaced with graffiti that is not being removed.

"You can't ask other people to remove it under threat of fine if governments don't show an example," he said. "I'm not averse to doing what they do in some other jurisdictions in forcing proprietors to remove it … (But) if they were to do that, I would say let's start with the governments. They would have to do it."

Residents can consult the Graffiti section of the borough's website, ville.montreal.qc.ca/cdn-ndg, for tips and advice on removing graffiti. They can also contact Prévention NDG directly at 514-736-2732 in Côte des Neiges and 514-489-6567 in NDG.