UPDATE, 12:30 p.m.: City workers on the case! See below.

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A swarm of presumably teenage punk taggers descended on Eureka’s Carson Park last night, completely covering one of the park’s facilities with maybe the ugliest and least skilled displays of graffiti the town has seen in some time.

Jeff Pauli, a local insurance agent who is active with Old Town Rotary, was among the many people to notice the contemptible display early this morning. His Rotary chapter has adopted Carson Park and has been rasing funds to improve it, improving the picnic tables and basketball courts and numerous other facilities.

“I have so many volunteer hours on the park,” Pauli told the Outpost this morning. “To drive by it and to see that this morning, it makes me sick.”

The eyesore will be short-lived. Miles Slattery, the city’s director of community services, said that his department will have crews out to wash or repaint the building later today. It doesn’t come as a complete shock — he said that he’s seeing a pretty dramatic rise in tagging at city-owned facilities over the last month or so, along with a similar increase in the city as a whole.

“They’re hammering our parks pretty damn good,” Slattery said. “Just in the last two to three weeks, it’s been really bad in all of our parks.”

Pauli is pretty angry about it. He tells the Outpost that he is personally offering a $1,000 reward for a tip that will lead to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for this particular tagstorm — which, in addition to being illegal, was undertaken by people with no discernable talent whatsoever.

If you have any information about this crime against public property and the entire concept of artistic expression, please call the Eureka Police Department at (707) 441-4044.

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• Eureka Graffiti Rising! Have You Been a Victim? EPD Would Like to Hear From You