City fighting street grime on all corners

“I have grown up and lived most of my adult life in the Cascade area, and I can’t recall seeing a street sweeper since the 1996 Olympics in my neighborhood,” said Nicole Gist-Dobbs. “I do recall seeing them in the downtown area after festivals or events within the last few years, but in my community, not at all.”

The changes come at a time when Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has said repeatedly that he wants Atlanta to be the “center of gravity for Southern cities,” thus making it a major player nationally.

But quality-of-life issues continue to plague the city.

Cleaning up the city — which hasn’t been done in a major way since the 1996 Olympics — has to be addressed quickly and decisively.

“This is something we should be doing for the taxpayers,” said Dexter White, the city’s deputy commissioner for public works. “When I moved here, I was very surprised that we didn’t sweep the streets.”

For the 2012 fiscal year, taxpayers will spend $48 million on solid waste removal, part of which is going toward the extra street cleaning. That figure is vastly different from comparable cities. Boston budgeted $80 million for 2012; Washington, D.C., $128 million.

“I think it all depends on where you go,” said Kelley Jackson, a 48-year-old writer. “Where I live, near Piedmont in the Virginia Highland [area], it is absolutely clean. Two blocks over on the Boulevard corridor, it’s not.”

One of the people Atlanta would like to impress would be Cinnamon Burnim Bowser, who was staying in a downtown hotel last weekend to speak at a conference for women entrepreneurs.

“I wasn’t stepping over piles of debris, but the city was dirty. Takeout containers sitting on the sidewalk, plastic bags everywhere, doorways filled with trash and rubbish,” said Bowser, who owns the Nail Taxi in Alexandria, Va. “I am in New York six or seven times a year, and I never say that about New York.”

Reed’s efforts harken back to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s 1990s campaign to clean up New York City — particularly Times Square — by increasing security, closing pornographic movie theaters, moving out drug dealers and panhandlers, and attracting upscale stores and restaurants.

Supporters say Giuliani made the area safer and cleaner, while critics argued that he targeted lower-income New Yorkers and the poor.

Lauren Jarrell, director of communications for the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, said they used two surveys to determine how visitors see Atlanta. In 2008, Georgia State University conducted a survey of vacationers who listed Atlanta’s cleanliness as one of the city’s top five positives.

In an ongoing survey of meeting planners, conducted along with the Georgia World Congress Center, Jarrell said a majority of the responses listed Atlanta as “above average or one of the best cities” in terms of cleanliness.

“This is a testament of what the city has done,” Jarrell said. “Making sure that we have a product that is going to help us deliver on our economic development.”

Do your part

But people who live in the city see things differently.

On Edgewood Avenue, where Leigh lives and runs an art space in an apartment building above shops and restaurants, it is not uncommon for her to see discarded food containers, an old man sleeping, or soiled baby diapers — which she found twice last week — on her doorstep.

“There is no encouragement for people to keep their area acceptable,” Leigh said. “I think it is just the people, not even the city itself, that is the problem. Don’t throw garbage where you live.”

White, the city official, said part of the solution to creating a cleaner environment is convincing residents to do their part to keep their surroundings clean and presentable.

“It is a mind-set,” he said. “It is going to be a problem if we don’t work together to keep our city clean.”

Atlanta’s part of that comes with the launch of the “3N1” plan, which completely changes how Atlanta has dealt with trash collection.

When workers hit the northeast quadrant of the city Monday, they will not only pick up trash, but trucks also will gather yard clippings and recycling. That procedure will continue throughout the week in different parts of the city.

James Wood, who lives on Howell Mill Road, recently got a solid waste bill for $500. Yet since July 4, 11 rotting bags of refuse have been sitting on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up. He is not optimistic about the new rules.

“If I am supposed to have this service done once a week, and I am paying for it, I want it picked up once a week,” Wood said.

The city has hired 50 seasonal workers to “de-litter,” primarily focusing on cutting the grass, weeding and cleaning up rights of way. In their first four days, the workers collected four tons of trash — particularly tires and bulk items — and cut more than 10 miles of grass.

“I see street sweepers in Midtown but never on the Southside,” Jackson said. “I didn’t know they existed until I moved to Midtown.”

They did exist but were rare sights. White said the city abandoned widespread street sweeping in 2009 to save money, although some long-timers claim they have never seen one in their neighborhoods.

But while the neighborhoods were not being swept, it would be inaccurate to say no sweeping was being done in Atlanta.

Because of the federal consent decree to maintain and upgrade the sewer system to meet requirements of the federal consent decree, the so-called “Combined Sewer Overflow,” zone is swept and cleaned regularly. That zone happens to be downtown, Midtown and Buckhead, which can lead to a perception that certain parts of the city are favored.

“We want to make sure the whole city is clean, not just downtown. Visitors come to Atlanta to see their families as well, and we want it to be clean for them, too,” White said. “Everybody is going to get the same amount of service.”