In our editorial of April 15, 2015, entitled Spring is in the Air, we commented that after a long and harsh winter finally we reached the spring and so many people were already going out to collect what was hidden under the snow.
Also, we alerted the authorities saying that it is not worth a day’s work if the mountains of collected waste will remain static for a month waiting for the trucks to come and finish the work running the risk of being scattered again throughout the neighborhoods. Also in this editorial we promoted the Great Cleansing campaign scheduled for the celebration of Earth Day, by different districts under the direction of Groundwork Lawrence in coordination with Comcast encouraging residents to come forward and join the group of volunteers in the largest community event all year.
Not that we are magical or experts to predict what will happen. The warning was based on the experience of previous years and it is already happening! We are already hearing complaints from citizens that their neighborhoods have not yet been collected. It is also true that the garbage collected by two thousand people in one day can’t be picked up at the same time, for the simple reason that the Department of Public Works does not have enough staff for this tremendous task, without abandoning the many obligations every day are presented to them.
We believe that we have already discussed the observation made by the realtor in 1989 when we bought the house we live in. “Mt. Vernon is the first neighborhood where the snow and debris are removed,” he told us, adding the reason, “Here lives a former mayor.” He was referring to Buckley, who has since died. Of course we always take his advice as a marketing tool.
The truth is that now we not only have a former mayor but also a mayor living in the area and we have not heard anyone saying that the garbage has not been collected. If we are not mistaken, where we only saw garbage bags, which have already been collected, was in Jacques Pond and in the corner of Chickering Rd and Cutler St along the Showcase Cinema fence, where every year a group of volunteers collected the leaves that actually belong to the city. As far as owners are concerned, they all maintain their property without volunteer help.
Our advice is that in future cleanings, the work should be coordinated between the volunteers and DPW and their ability to collect the bags. Again, these massive cleanups have become nothing more than a group of politicians posing for photo ops, and after exciting the masses, go away and leave the stain and bad name to D.P.W.
