Color us mystified: Bainbridge officials trying to find out why downtown benches are turning orange

Bainbridge Island city officials are seeing red — orange, actually — over a mysterious case of vandalism that stretches from one end of downtown Winslow to the other.

Bainbridge Island city officials are seeing red — orange, actually — over a mysterious case of vandalism that stretches from one end of downtown Winslow to the other.

Bainbridge Island City Manager Doug Schulze told the council at its meeting Tuesday that some of the concrete cube benches on Winslow Way have been painted orange in the past week.

“This is something that was not authorized by the city,” Schulze said. “City staff didn’t do it.”

The benches were installed during the Winslow Way makeover and are arranged in clusters up and down the city’s main drag.

Not every bench was painted orange, but benches from one end of Winslow Way to the other have taken on the color of Cinderella’s carriage at midnight.

The paint job appears methodical, with no signs of dripping paint or splatters on nearby sidewalks.

City officials have no idea who is responsible — no one has been caught red-handed — and the possibilities of removing the paint are problematic.

The cubes can’t easily be cleaned, Schulze said, because pressure washing or using a solvent solution could damage the surface of the concrete.

The city could decide to leave the cubes colored orange, or paint over the orange with paint that matches the gray color, he said.

“We are trying to find out who did it. If you hear any rumors about who might have done this, we certainly would like to chat with them, so it doesn’t continue,” Schulze told the council.

The colored cubes are the latest incidents of mysterious mischief downtown in recent months.

In March, the city asked for the public’s help in stopping a string of illegal dumping incidents where person or persons unknown were leaving small plastic bags filled with an unidentified soupy mixture on top of trash receptacles across downtown, from city hall to Waterfront Park.

Officials said the bags had been filled with some sort of liquid food waste, and raccoons and birds were making the situation worse by tearing the bags open, leaving a gooey and gross mess behind.

The city never found the culprit, and reports of the slime bags dropped off in April.