Graffiti Reward Program Nearly Out of Money : Vandalism: City Council will consider reducing the size of payouts and asking business leaders to pitch in.

The city’s 2-year-old graffiti reward program is almost bankrupt, forcing Los Angeles officials to scramble for new funding to compensate people who aid in apprehending the relentless taggers.

Trying to revive a program that has only $1,300 in cash, a City Council panel will consider proposals today that would both reduce the size of individual rewards from $1,000 to $500 and appeal to business leaders to help finance the fund.

The program’s financial difficulties could not come at a worse time. The city is poised to embark on an aggressive billboard campaign advertising the reward program. Two billboard firms, Patrick Media and Gannett Outdoor Advertising, have agreed to donate thousands of dollars worth of space to promote the program at 70 sites throughout the city.

But given the program’s uncertain future, city officials might have to scratch the line “$1,000 Reward For Apprehension of Graffiti Vandals” from the billboard message. “We can’t hold out a false promise,” said Ali Sar, a spokesman for Councilman Hal Bernson, who is backing one of the proposals to revive the program.

Delphia Jones, director of the city’s primary graffiti-removal program, Operation Cleansweep, agreed.

“Unless there’s a commitment from the City Council to continue the reward program,” she said, “I will recommend that it be discontinued because it is just too frustrating to the public otherwise.”

The reward fund was set up in March, 1990, with $50,000 of city money, based on the premise that corporate Los Angeles would sustain it with additional donations. But support from the business community has been paltry. And a pitch in January by Mayor Tom Bradley, asking 200 business leaders and corporations for financial help, yielded only $2,900.

“The response has been absolutely deplorable,” said Francine Oschin, another aide to Bernson, who proposed the reward program. “The thing is we have a city that is filthy and everybody suffers.”

Facing its worst financial crisis in decades, the city might not be able to reward people like 25-year-old Christie Jeryl McSweeney of Canyon Country, who filed a claim for $1,000 after breaking a big toe snagging a tagger in the San Fernando Valley, or Reuben Garcia of the San Fernando Valley, who has been paid $3,000 to date for his graffiti-busting efforts and has two outstanding $1,000 claims for another two arrests.

The biggest beneficiary of the program has been Michael Rizkalla, 33, owner of Micky’s Famous Date Shake, in the Crenshaw district. Rizkalla has received $5,000 in rewards for five separate busts he has made near his restaurant.

“The area’s cleaned up now,” said Rizkalla, who personally made arrests of several graffiti painters after security cameras outside his business trained on the youths as they spray-painted.

Bernson could not be reached for comment on his plans to refloat the reward program. But Sar, his spokesman, said that the councilman intends to seek reforms that would impose mandatory $1,000 fines on convicted graffiti vandals. Typically, judges now sentence such people to perform community service, not pay fines.

The proceeds would be used to replenish the reward fund as well as pay for graffiti abatement programs, Sar said. Bernson also intends to urge the City Council to rescue the program, using money from the city’s general fund. Sar said Bernson also would make another appeal to the private sector for donations.

Meanwhile, the graffiti problem--once confined to gang members marking their turf--has become more sophisticated and harder to stop, says Jones, of Operation Cleansweep.

“We are now looking at graffiti crews of 30 to 40 members writing their monikers everywhere you can imagine, including overhead freeway signs,” Jones said.

Members of one of the graffiti-tagging crews, she noted, call themselves “Unstoppable Criminals.”