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A man sweeps down a Hanover Street sidewalk one morning last week in front of the CVS pharmacy. (George Rizer/Globe Staff) |
NORTH END
There's broom for improvement
Residents push for clean sweep
It's a call to arms in the North End. The weapon of choice: a broom. The strategy: Commit 10 minutes a day to sweeping up the neighborhood to help keep it clean.
The Clean Streets Committee, an offshoot of the neighborhood's residents group, is pushing an ongoing campaign it calls "10 minutes with a broom."
The group is hoping it catches on, not just with businesses that often clean in front of their establishments anyway, but with residents too.
"The conditions of the streets are deplorable, said Naomi Paul, one of three cochairs for the committee and a North End resident of nearly six years. "I can't believe I live in a neighborhood where it is OK to have the streets this dirty."
On any given day - and not just during the high-traffic tourist season - discarded beverage cups, paper plates, plastic, cigarette butts, and glass, among other garbage, can be seen in the gutters and on the sidewalks.
And the main thoroughfares such as Hanover and Salem streets are not necessarily the worst offenders. The residential streets - Prince, North, and Fleet among them - can be just as littered with trash, if not more so, the group said.
Boston's Public Works Department, for its part, sends through street sweepers on many, though not all, of the streets in the neighborhood about twice a month from April until November.
The city also deploys smaller green machines to clean year-round, and has assigned two to three city workers to the neighborhood (more during the summer) to manually pick up litter.
Still, there is only so much the city can do. Budgets are not bottomless (and only getting smaller) and the machines have their limitations. Cars frequently get in the way, for example, and the green machines are not as powerful as the large street sweepers.
"We have spent an exceptional amount of time working with the North End residential and commercial groups to address these issues," said Dennis Royer, chief of Boston Public Works and Transportation. "But independently we can't solve the problem. We have to work together."
This is where residents and businesses must step in to make up for what the city isn't doing, Paul said. Since the campaign was launched in November, the group has gathered roughly 50 signatures of residents and businesses pledging to participate, including
"It's a continual effort," said Merilee Wolfson, owner of High Gear Jewelry on Hanover Street. "I'm checking the street throughout the day. If I see something, I take care of it."
Wolfson, like many other businesspeople, already had a routine in place for keeping the area in front of her storefront clean, but signed on to the campaign to show her support.
The small but determined committee of three has also reached out to the North End Chamber of Commerce. While residents and businesses may not always see eye to eye on issues such as liquor and entertainment licenses, on this they can agree.
In fact, according to Joanne Prevost Anzalone, president of the North End Chamber of Commerce, the business group's clean streets committee, "in the spirit of cooperation," has merged with the resident's committee.
But reaching residents will prove to be more of a challenge.
"Everyone is empowered to believe that because they pay taxes, the city should [clean]," said Ken Rothman, owner of True Value Hardware Store on Salem Street. "Or residents feel, I'm paying rent so it's my landlord's responsibility."
Rothman, whose family has owned the store for 44 years, says the cleanliness of the neighborhood has declined as the community has changed.
"Families have moved and owners of buildings have moved," he said. "There are more rentals and people have taken less pride in the community. They may agree to keep it clean, but they aren't going to do anything."
The committee is working on reaching out to condominium boards and landlords, local and absentee, and contacting the city about so-called problem properties that are consistently plagued with trash.
Paul and others have also cited the scarcity of trash cans as another contributing factor to the problem, and those that are scattered about the North End can often be found overflowing, she said.
According to Royer, Public Works is looking at a variety of options for additional funding for more "big belly" bins for the North End and the rest of the city. But he also noted the challenge of finding space for more trash cans on the neighborhood's narrow sidewalks.
There is still a lot of work to do, Paul said, and it has to be a constant effort, not just a once-a-year event. "We'll keep plugging away," she said. "We don't want to live in a pig pen."
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
