City cleanup deemed a success

Talk about it

Jamestown’s citywide residential curbside cleanup week has been relatively smooth and successful, according to a number of city officials.

The city’s cleanup week allows residents to place items such as tree branches, basic household items and small-scale building debris out near their respective curbs or shoulders for free pickup. Pickup began Monday and ended Thursday, but extended hours for the city baler facility and city recycling centers continue through Saturday.

“Everything’s going pretty darn good,” said Roger Mayhew, James-town’s sanitation foreman. “Any complaints we’ve had have pretty much been the usual — stuff not properly placed by the curb or electronics that aren’t supposed to be there. Things like that.”

While Mayhew said those sorts of little things are not as bad as they have been in years past, it’s still enough to slow down the work.

“Not significantly, but it does slow the process for the workers quite a bit,” he said.

About 35 city employees from several departments, 19 trucks and six loaders have been used for Clean-Up Week this year to remove hundreds of tons of garbage.

Most of the problems that the workers on the streets have run into are pretty usual, according to Harold Sad, Jamestown’s street foreman.

“Overall, things are going well and most of the folks are doing good about following the rules,” he said. “Some people are trying to hide some things in the piles but then again we get that every year.”

Most of those items included normal household garbage, large household appliances and electronics — all on the list of materials that crews would not pick up as part of cleanup week.

Total garbage collection, however, is down from 2011, based on the most current data available Thursday.

Mayhew reported just 157.5 tons of garbage collected in the first three days, which covered the southeast, southwest and northwest sections of the city.

That’s down from 225.57 tons of garbage collected in the first three days along the same three sections of the city in 2011.

Judy Seher, scale clerk operator at the city baler, said she believed the low totals could be connected to heavy traffic at the baler during the last two weeks of May.

“The last couple of Saturdays in May were tremendously busy for us here with a lot of people coming in and getting rid of their garbage,” Seher said.

Mayhew thinks the low totals could also be a result of the cleanup week’s change in date this year.

“In years past, this has always been during the third week of May,” Mayhew said. “We had some outrageous days in May because I think a lot of people had planned to be out of town and made weekend plans in June.”

Seher said as each year goes on, the street department’s work continues to improve.

“The street department is very much on top of things in terms of getting everything organized, so I think everything has been pretty smooth,” she said.

The Jamestown Police Department has been pleased with this year’s efforts as well, citing almost no calls about the cleanup, according to Capt. Gary Peterson.

“It seems like the people are getting better about learning the rules of pickup week each year, because as we went around town this week after areas that had been picked up, there were very few items left over,” Peterson said. “I think the whole program has gone really well.”

Sun reporter Brian Willhide can be reached at 701-952-8454 or by email at bwillhide@jamestownsun.com

Tags: local news, news