Monterey Turning Traffic Controllers Into Art

Monterey will have a new creative look across the community as the town plans to wrap and decorate traffic control boxes with artistic designs.

Monterey Cultural Administrator Rafferty Cleary said traffic control boxes are not pleasing to look at as it’s just a big piece of metal at the corner of each traffic light. Cleary said he got the idea after visiting several cities on business trips. Cleary said the town has not decided on what boxes will look like but is considering looking to Monterey High School Students for designs.

“We are leaning towards having Monterey High School’s Art Department and the students come up with designs and then the city selecting three of them to put on the traffic control boxes and then we will make sure the students are credited with their work by having them sign the designs.”

Cleary said projects like this one although it is small make a huge difference aesthetically and historically. Cleary said the expected timeline to have the three traffic control boxes within the town wrapped is shortly after the new year.

“We obviously want to give the high school students time to come up with some designs,” Cleary said. “This was a project that we had reached out to the art department last year about and I think at that time they started working on some designs. When we initially reached out the town wasn’t exactly sure how we were going to be able to pay for the project.”

The town has a budget of $1,500 for the project. Cleary said the town will pay for the project using Hotel-Motel Tax dollars.

“That’s one of the benefits of the town adopting the Hotel-Motel tax or Occupancy tax as it is also called,” Cleary said. “Now we got a pot of money that we can pull from that doesn’t necessarily burden the general fund.”

Cleary said the project is part of the goal to make downtown Monterey look more appealing. Cleary said it would be special to see some of the Monterey High School students be featured in the project.