Taggers have been painting graffiti at the north end of the Ballard Bridge in recent weeks and Charlie Ballenger has been chasing them away.

Ballenger has lived in a yellow school bus under the bridge for the last two years with the consent of businesses directly west and east of him. Ballenger is a caretaker for the property around him and said he is tired of waking up at night and hearing the sound of spray paint cans rattling, even if he does use the stuff to earn his living. After a knee injury ended a career as a cabbie, Ballenger became an airbrush artist. He often works late at night doing paintings with automotive themes to sell to local businesses.

A few weeks ago, Ballenger heard the tell tale sign of taggers at work. The sound of spray paint being shaken with the ball bearing inside the cans.

He went outside and saw ten kids doing graffiti on a wall of the Wesmar building. Ballenger said the taggers were a racially mixed group of White, Asian and Black kids. Ballenger spotted them trying to climb onto the Wesmar building.

He yelled at them and told them there was a video camera mounted on the building. "They scrammed pretty fast," Ballenger said.

The taggers have been showing around 2 to 3 a.m., often as Saturday night transitioned to Sunday morning. One of the taggers carries an army surplus medical bag filled with paint cans said Ballenger.

He calls the police when he catches taggers in the act. Officers come to fill out an incident report and hand Ballenger a business card.

"That's pretty much it," said Ballenger.

"They're always trying to get on the building. At one point they tried to make a mural on the roof," said Daryl Funston, owner of Wesmar, a nearby business. Ironically, one of Wesmar's products is a special paint that is often used to cover graffiti.

Taggers have also left their mark on some murals painted by artists on the bridge structure.

Ballenger says the murals are serious artwork that artists have put time into creating.

"They cover over this art and screw it up. They're just destroying this stuff, it's good art and it's done right," said Ballenger.

Now that the murals have been tagged, Ballenger would like to see them painted over. He says he can teach the taggers how to do paint their own murals.

"I can show them how to paint and make money off it. If they paint a mural, they do something constructive, not destructive," Ballenger said.

The Seattle Engineering Department has told Ballenger they can't paint over the murals without the permission of the artists.

The murals were painted in the early 1990s by a group calling itself "The Street Smart Art." The project was funded by a Department of Neighborhoods Small and Simple grant.

Normally public art must be maintained by the artists who created them said Lori Patrick, the public relations manager for the city's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.

Patrick believes The Street Smart Art group may no longer exist.

The city's graffiti hotline is 684-7587.