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City to seek residents' help to deal with the mountains of trash and animal waste all that snow was covering
By adamg on Mon, 03/16/2015 - 3:20pm
City officials said today they are pouring extra manpower into cleaning up city streets and sidewalks as the snow melts, but say making Boston shine again is going to take help from residents.
City Councilor Sal LaMattina (North End, East Boston, Charlestown) said he hopes residents put as much effort into cleaning the curbs and sidewalks in front of their homes as they put into helping neighbors shovel out their cars.
"We're all in this together," he said at a hearing called by Councilor Matt O'Malley (West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain) to look at city plans for post-snowpocalypse cleanup.
O'Malley called for "staggering numbers" of volunteers for the city's annual Boston Shines spring cleanups in April and May. Councilor Tim McCarthy (Hyde Park, Mattapan, Roslindale), said he's hopeful the city could enlist local teens to help clean the city, either as volunteers or possibly even by starting some city summer jobs early.
DPW Commissioner Michael Dennehy acknowledged that a good portion of the trash now surfacing as the snow recedes is from missed pickups in January and February. He said the city's trash haulers picked up 3,200 tons less trash in those months than in the same period last year, because they were unable to complete their normal rounds either due to snow or snow-narrowed streets. City Councilor Charles Yancey (Dorchester), said some of his constituents went weeks without trash pickups.
But that doesn't explain all the dog waste that is now surfacing on local streets and in local parks, officials said. O'Malley said he's seeing the worst "animal droppings" problem in 20 years.
Combine the trash and the poop and the sand and the salt, throwin melting snow and the result is a disgusting, sodden mess. Dennehy said workers from all ten city DPW yards fanned out this weekend to try to dismember some of the larger snow mounds that still remain on main streets and intersections and "what's inside these piles is not good."
Dennehy said Mayor Walsh authorized the early hiring of an extra 20 hokey workers - people who go around on foot with a barrel and spiked stick or other device for picking trash off the ground. Although they're best known for working in business districts, Dennehy said this season they will also go into residential areas cleaning up after the trash and recycling trucks - whose operators he's asked to try to be especially careful this year about ensuring stuff gets into the trucks rather than falling to the ground.
Although officials hope residents will help out, they did make one exception: City Parks Commissioner Chris Cook pleaded with residents who have plow-equipped pickups to stop trying to plow out ball fields - because driving a heavy vehicle on wet grass can badly damage the fields. Leave the snow removal to the parks professionals, he asked.
Cook said he expects Little League fields to be ready for the opening of the spring season - in part thanks to a $125,000 donation he said a private party is about to give the city for that specific purpose. However, he acknowledged that some of the adult leagues that use city fields might run into some scheduling issues.
City Councilor Tim McCarthy, a DPW administrator before his election to the council in 2013, referenced the breaking of the seasonal snow record yesterday. "I was cheering it on as hard as I was the Patriots, believe it or not," because now, when constituents complain about snow or trash removal in a winter they don't think was the worst ever, he can tell them yes, yes it was.
In addition to trash, city officials also have to deal with a bumper crop of potholes. On some streets, Dennehy said, the weight of snow piles caused sidewalks to buckle. And it turns out that the historic mile marker on Harvard Avenue - repaired a couple of years ago after a truck rammed it - is cracked again.
Dennehy said the city is looking at possible federal aid to help pay for all the snow removal and cleanup costs. Councilors at the hearing expressed interest in possibly dipping into the city "rainy day" fund to help pay for the massive cleanup.
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Comments
McCarthy
Can residents in District 5 please get Rob Consalvo back? He wasn't perfect but at least didn't come up with nonstop excuses like McCarthy does and actually got things done.
Pick one
Would you rather upgrade Sanchez as rep or McCarthy as councilor? McCarthy at least seems to be active in Roslindale and shows up at meetings, etc...
Also, the people who should clean up after dogs? Dog owners.
Nothing against Rob
I contacted McCarthy on something and he got right back to me. That's what he's there to do.
Origin Of The Hokey Pokey?
Doesn't appear so
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokey_cokey
The inspiration for the song's title that resulted, "The Hokey Pokey", came from an ice cream vendor whom Tabor had heard as a boy, calling out, "Hokey pokey penny a lump. Have a lick make you jump". He changed the name to "The Hokey Cokey" at the suggestion of the officer who said that "cokey", in Canada, meant "crazy" and would sound better.[citation needed]
Feels so good when you put it
Feels so good when you put it in your mouth,
Sends a shiver all down your spine.
wink wink nudge nudge
'e told 'im knowingly.
Oh, So That's What It's All About!
Helping out
I've spent a couple of hours this winter, on a few different days, re-organizing the trash on my street, re-bagging it, and putting it somewhere that the trash pickup guys can find it. It's been an exercise in feeling neighborly vs. stressed by all the trash (and neighbors who were careless about putting it where it was not accessible for pickup).
But ultimately, I think it's worth it to spend an hour or so cleaning up our own streets, and not waiting till the April/May Boston Shines date.
Are your neighbors animals?
Are your neighbors animals?
Animals are neater
No .... I have never seen animals make this much of a mess. Many of my neighbors are slobs.... especially the young, transient, never-lived-in-a-city-before people. The older neighbors care about the street but it might take someone to take the lead to mobilize the people who care. That was the good part about cleaning up trash - spending some time outside and getting into some good conversations.
"never-lived-in-a-city-before"
I don't know if you're the same anon who habitually uses this epithet to describe the kids getting on your lawn these days, but I suspect it has nothing to do with where they've lived and everything to do with how they've lived. Suburbs don't have magic elves picking up after people any more than cities do, so you can stop imagining that city living somehow magically instills a social conscience. Parents and neighbors do that, or fail to do that, as the case may be.
Good point....
Good point.... the not-from-the-city label detracts from more important ideas.
(1.) How to feel neighborly and not grumpy when doing something like picking up trash.
(2.) How to help build a culture on a city street that encourages people to think and act in a way that makes the street function as a pleasant community.
[And I haven't used the not-from-the-city label before.... and btw just posted anonymously because I wanted to talk about the street/trash thing anonymously.]
how much effort?
Looking around my my neighborhood, this is apparently "no effort whatsoever."
Disgusted and embarrassed by other dog owners
As a dog owner, I am disgusted and embarrassed by the stupid, lazy, and selfish dog owners who do not pick up after their animals. What the heck do they think happens to this [stuff] after the snow melts? In the parks and on many of the streets in my neighborhood, there are barrels everywhere. And the stuff they are leaving behind is not out in the middle of some field of snow that they cannot get to. It is usually right next to the sidewalk where they could pick it up with very little effort. Character is defined by what you do when you think no one is looking.
Wait, What? Now the City
needs your help but will fine you if you do not have your snow removed off of your sidewalk in enough time when you are stuck at work but yet the city is too slow to remove the snow from sidewalks that they are responsible for? This city is getting worse
Dogs and their owners
Dog owners should absolutely be out front picking up dog poo.
I'm sure they will all claim that every bag of poop this Winter has made it to a barrel, but somebody else left it around.
So in the interest of neighborliness, if you have a dog, please take a large trash bag on your upcoming walks, and scoop ALL of those little poop baggies.
If not because it's the right thing to do, then maybe because you'll help build some good-will for the next time a dog park is proposed, or some other ordinance is being discussed.
Watched one of those can
Watched one of those can collectors going around and picking up all of the aluminum cans for their deposits, but ignoring all of the plastic bottles that have no deposits. It's to bad we failed to pass an expanded bottle bill that would have given an incentive for people to collect a wider range of bottles.
Yes, please - everyone should
Yes, please - everyone should rake up all this crap into the street where the street cleaners can get it (although they'll have to weave in and out of remaining snowbanks). Getting a shovel and a barrel to put this crap in and putting where the crews can get it would be even better.
Cleaning/trash/city
I'm applaud at Tito Jackson office I called them numerous time never even returned a call !!the Dpw was suppose to remove a large snow bank next to the stop signs and they never did I'm so sick of this administration!! the city all they keep doing is sending me emails but for what when they tell you that something will get done it doesn't!!!
Check out Bremen street
Check out Bremen street greenway in East Boston between porter and all the way up Marginal street, I went out for a walk 2 days ago on the greenway and I must have dodged several hundred pieces of Dog shit making my walk very unpleasant, to top it off I could not pass an area on the greenway because there was a large pool of water on the side of the BFD firehouse . Engineering flaw..