Citation For Cleaning?

Image from Wikipedia

You’ve probably heard this story on the evening news, or read about it in the Post-Gazette. Paul McCarthy, 62, of Greenfield, grew tired of his neighborhood, an area known as The Run, being cluttered with litter and trash along Saline Street and Second Avenue, so he contacted the city’s 311 help line.

McCarthy then waited for something to be done about the problem, continued treatments for his cancer, and waited some more. And when nothing had been done by June, he took it upon himself to go out in the cooler hours of morning and spend a little time each day gathering litter and even cutting weeds and vines that were intruding onto the sidewalks.

He would collect everything, the litter and clippings, into piles and then call the city to just come and remove them. But that’s where things became a little crazy, and ultimately seem to have spun out of control on all sides.

Because the city’s Public Works Department, like all public departments, needs to operate on a tightly set schedule for maximum efficiency under a restrained budget. To dispatch crews every time a resident calls and says there’s a pile of garbage on the sidewalk just isn’t feasible. And so began a war of wills between a civic minded resident who was sick of inaction with the litter, and city workers who likely grew increasingly frustrated with McCarthy, who despite his good intentions, his actions were far from optimal for the PWD’s operations.

The PWD did send a crew out at one point to collect the piles McCarthy had gathered, but it seems as though there was a sadly missed opportunity at this point. The boss of that crew reportedly informed McCarthy that he needed to bag up any future piles of litter he gathered.

Of course, McCarthy, 62, retired and fighting cancer, felt he was providing enough in free labor for the city with the hours he spent gathering the garbage, and he was understandably upset at being told he had to do more, or do nothing. So, adding defiance to his civic involvement, he continued to do just as he had been. No more or less.

And that ultimately got him a visit from a Public Works Inspector, who wrote him 2 citations. Apparently, if you move trash from one spot to another, you’re littering. These citations also came after news of McCarthy’s efforts and battle with the PWD had reached high levels of the city government, at which point Public Works Director Guy Costa, and his boss, Operations Director Art Victor were alerted to the brewing situation, and somewhere the decision was made to cite McCarthy.

Unfortunately, once the story had grown to the point where Costa and Victor were brought into it, whomever made the decision to cite McCarthy was possibly giving as much thought to the political PR of the story as they were to resolving it in a practical or constructive manner.

This is why I say there was probably a sadly missed opportunity much earlier in the tale; when that first crew arrived to clear away the piles that McCarthy had gathered. Upon seeing that they were dealing with an older man in failing health, if someone had just said “let’s try to get one or two more members of the community to help McCarthy in his efforts”, rather than telling him he would have to do more on his own or quit trying to improve his neighborhood completely, this whole story might have had a very different, and even inspirational outcome.

I understand that PWD employees aren’t exactly community organizers, but when your department resources and manpower are limited and you see that members of the community are willing to pitch in, is it really so hard to reach out while you are on the scene, or at least return to the office and tell your boss, “hey, we’ve got an opportunity here if we could just get one or two more people in that community to step up and help McCarthy out by bagging the piles he gathers.”

Again, I know that PWD employees aren’t community organizers, but I bet it would have taken less time to make a few calls and reach out to the community to find McCarthy some help than has been wasted on this whole mess already to get it to this point. It’s heartbreaking to think that a “that’s not my job” attitude could be helping us down a path towards rivaling Filthadelphia for dirtiest city in Pennsylvania. It’s more run down than I can remember in my lifetime right now, so I would hope that any help the city can get from residents would be embraced and encouraged.

If McCarthy, or anyone in any neighborhood, is willing to gather the litter up, reach out and help find them one or two others to bag it. Then everything is neat and packaged properly for the city to collect on the regular weekly trash pick-up days.

Nobody needs to be embarrassed in the press. Nobody needs to be hauled before a judge and fined for civic participation–and a community looks a lot better from it all without adding to the burden of already limited city departments.

It just seems that would be a far more productive approach, and who knows, if residents began feeling like the city wanted to work with them in this way then the idea might just catch on in other neighborhoods as well.