ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 1, 1996 TAG: 9610010085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE WASN'T hiding its trash-strewn streets Monday night; it showed slides of them and came clean. Now what?
Jim McClung passed around a book to show the demands on his solid waste crews: 580 citizen requests in a recent two-week period for pickups of brush, old refrigerators and other bulk goods.
Love seats, baby beds, sewing machine tables, toilets. And that doesn't count all the junk piled high on Roanoke streets by people who don't know or don't care that the city won't pick it up unless a citizen requests it.
"Not only is this ugly. It can be dangerous as well," said McClung.
Roanoke residents brainstormed in five small groups at the Roanoke Civic Center Monday night about why city streets are so dirty now and what could be done about it.
Public works workers - past and present - say downsizing in their department is one culprit. Former employees said curbside waste used to be picked up all over town within a week; now it often lies there for weeks.
"It's real dirty now," said Bill Cochrane, who drove one of the city's two bulk trucks until his retirement last year. "It's real dirty."
He and others say the city used to have an enforcer of trash laws who cracked down on building contractors and other citizens who left their messes on the street. "Now they're gone," said former public works employee Melvin Matthews.
Roanoke has two bulk trash trucks for the whole city. Larry Taylor drives the one that collects appliances and other bulk goods; Lewis Andrews' truck picks up brush. They each are limited to 42 stops a day.
Andrews said the trouble began when his whole department was downsized and regular garbage crews were no longer able to take brush.
Public Works Director Bill Clark said there are other reasons, too: Roanoke has more renters than it used to and as they come and go, there's more of their old furniture out on the streets. He said the city's having trouble teaching them that their piles of trash won't be picked up unless they call the city at 981-2225 and ask for it.
Here are a few of the ideas that citizens proposed for cleaning up city streets:
*Combine city crews so they can cover more territory more quickly.
*Buy two more bulk trucks, at a price tag of $75,000 each, so there'll be one for each quadrant of the city.
*Hire more solid waste workers. One citizen said the city's top administrators are paid too much. "All the money goes to the top, it doesn't go to the bottom."
*Begin charging citizens for bulk pickups, providing incentive for them to take their stuff free to the city's Transfer Station. (There was disagreement about the feasibility of this, particularly among elderly residents with fixed incomes.)
*Levy fines against building contractors and landlords who leave remodeling debris and tenant's old furnishings out on the street.
*Help neighborhood organizations take more responsibility for alerting the city about lingering waste. Larry Taylor praised the residents of Day and Marshall avenues in Old Southwest who cleaned up their streets in the rain last Saturday. He hauled away 41/2 truckloads of debris, furniture and old appliances.
Dwight Carter, the city dispatcher who's answered calls about bulk pickup for 27 years, said that building contractors and others from outlying jurisdictions dump their debris on Roanoke streets in the middle of the night.
He said city residents can make Roanoke cleaner if they become better informed about the city's rules on waste. "We could do it without a tax increase," he said, "if we could just educate each other."
Mariam Alam, coordinator of the Roanoke Neighborhood Partnership, said the city is organizing a committee that will take Monday night's ideas and draw up a proposal that will be presented at another public meeting around December. Her numbers at the partnership are 345-8250 and 981-1286.
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