GWINNETT COUNTY: Man’s mission: To keep locale free of debris

Just about every weekday, you can find Dave Rosselle out driving around the Gwinnett Place mall area, looking for trash, graffiti or just about anything out of sorts.

It’s his job, but it’s more than that.

“It’s just kind of in my blood. It’s what I do,” said Rosselle, the operations manager for the Gwinnett Place Community Improvement District.

Rosselle, who lives in the small Jackson County town of Talmo, started his daily driving tours of the Gwinnett Place area about five years ago.

He frequently stops, hopping out of his pickup to pull up illegally placed signs or pick up garbage tossed along the side of the road. He’ll ask property owners to clean up overflowing garbage cans, and he reports potholes and problems with traffic signs to county officials for repair.

It’s all part of the “broken windows” philosophy —- the idea that fixing small problems and making the community more attractive will make people more inclined to care for the area themselves.

“When people see a nice clean area, they’re less likely to want to throw cans and bottles and cigarette butts out the window,” he said.

Rosselle cares a lot about the area, said Joe Allen, executive director of the CID. “He is the eyes and ears for this community,” he said.

So far this year, Rosselle and the landscaping crew hired by the CID to maintain rights-of-way and landscaped interstate interchanges have picked up 2,204 bags of trash and 1,934 illegal signs, Allen said.

“We’re sending a message that this is a clean, safe area,” he said.

Gwinnett Place isn’t the only location Rosselle has worked to clean up. When living in the Centerville community south of Snellville, Rosselle adopted part of the Yellow River.

One time, he helped fish a Volkswagen body out of the water.

“This is my dream job,” he said. “I can’t believe they’re actually paying me to do this.”