Thunder Bay seems to be winning its battle against graffiti — at least according to the folks who are behind the city’s graffiti management strategy.

The manager of Thunder Bay’s anti-graffiti program said residents wasted no time using the reporting tools that were introduced in April.

Charles Campbell said there was a flurry of reports early and, because of that, a lot of graffiti was removed.

“We've had over 200 reports,” he said. “We worked with businesses and property owners to get it cleaned up. We certainly saw a drop in the number of graffiti calls [afterwards].”

Andrew Foulds, city councillor and chair of the Graffiti Advisory Committee, agreed graffiti has become a lot less visible in the community.

“One of the things I'm noticing is it is not going back up,” he said. “And we certainly know that one of the biggest factors to defeat graffiti is to get it down quickly.”

Foulds said the next step is to review the program in hopes of re-launching in the spring, when graffiti vandals are more likely to return.

Campbell noted bylaw officers or city contractors respond to reports about graffiti. So far this year, four citizens have received rebate cheques for cleaning up the graffiti on their own, which is another part of the anti-graffiti program.