Volunteer efforts keep U-District clean

Published by University Business News.

The brooms swishing about the University District May 30 were not just raising a lot of dust. Local community and business members scattered a message that Saturday: “This neighborhood is ours.”

Sponsored by a host of University area organizations, including SAFECO, the Greater University Chamber of Commerce, Hot Lips Pizza and Seattle Disposal, approximately 250 people answered the annual challenge that took place Saturday. Volunteers removed sidewalk litter, deposited large trash items at designated locations and stripped posters from utility poles and other public structures. At this writing, the amount of debris collected had not yet been calculated.

In conjunction with the annual cleanup this year, organizers initiated a “Trash to Cash” Corporate Challenge to benefit area human service agencies. Annual cleanup participants have pledged a total of $450 per ton of litter collected. Last year, the cleanup produced five-and-a- half tons of litter. This year, the motto for collecting is “the more the better.”

Volunteer coordinator for the event, Janet Park of SAFECO, said the annual cleanup provides organizations an excellent opportunity to give constructively to the community.

“Trash to Cash” proceeds will equally be disbursed among local social services agencies: the University District Food Bank, Youth Center Street Ministry and Teen Feed, and the Churches Emergency Fund.

According to Greater University Chamber of Commerce Executive Director, Betty Spieth, the annual cleanup is just a drop in the dust pan where the area’s good neighbor program is concerned.

In 1989, community members saw a need for area beautification. After researching cleanup options, Spieth said that community members petitioned the City Council to institute a mandatory Business Improvement Area (BIA) fund. However, the University District lacked the interest necessary to sustain such a measure. Instead, merchants hedged the bureaucracy by installing a more economical voluntary program to clean their streets.

“[The BIA] would have created a whole new governing organization and more red tape,” Spieth said. “But we still had litter, so we put together our current program.”

The program calls for daily maintenance of area streets and sidewalks much like the annual cleanup. It too relies on private contributions to back the current $35,000 janitorial contract. In return, seven days a week, Bravo and Garcia Cleaning performs cleaning services along University Way N.E. from N.E. 41^st Street to N.E. 52^nd Streets, and between 15^th Ave. N.E. and Brooklyn Ave. N.E. on N.E. 50^th, 47^th, 45^th and 43^rd Streets.

The contract also includes power washing of streets twice a year which has been dropped temporarily due to the water shortage.

Dan Samson, owner of Danken’s, said community participation has been the key to the program’s success.

“Anyone who does anything to help the community is great,” Samson said.

Samson forecasted further involvement for his shop in future good neighbor activities. Since the inception of the annual cleanup, Danken’s has donated about $300 worth of ice cream each year to participants.

As True Value Hardware owner, Jerry Cathey said, “If you have a business on ‘The Ave,’ you support this kind of thing.”

Cathey recalled that prior to the daily maintenance a busy summer afternoon transformed the District into an eyesore.

“Merchants who don’t get into [the Good Neighbor Program] are fools,” Cathey said. “It makes the community a more desirable neighborhood to shop.”

The University District’s volunteer approach to community cleaning, is, for the most part, unusual. Most other similar programs in Seattle are mandatory, implemented through BIAs. BIA administrator for the Downtown Business Association, Carla Clark, explained that her sector is divided into three areas: the waterfront, the retail core, and First and Second Avenues.

Each common area adheres to a different cleanup program under a subaccount overseen by the association. The retail core, for example, bankrolls $70,000 per year to remove sidewalk debris on a daily basis. Additional monies allotted to the core area support items such as park flowers and beautification projects.

Clark said that mandatory daily cleanup programs ensure a consistent, day-in, day-out level of service via self-assessment.

The association’s president for the past 21 years, John Gilmore, said the paid cleanup program allows community members more leverage in their service expectations. “When you pay, you expect and can demand the job you pay for.”

Clark adds that, “Voluntary cleanup is difficult to guarantee.”

No one knows this better than Spieth and University area businesses, since there have been times when the Good Neighbor program’s existence was challenged. But those trials have been met. Last January, for example, Mike Worthy of First Interstate Bank, a leading supporter of community endeavors, offered to make contributions to the Good Neighbor fund in the name of individuals and businesses who opened accounts at the bank.

Worthy, and many other business operators who consistently support community programs might end up paying a slightly higher price for them. By its voluntary nature, the Good Neighbor program usually receives repeated financial backing from the same businesses, in effect underwriting services for those who choose not to pay.

Spieth said the Chamber asks that merchants pay a mere $150 per year to buoy the Good Neighbor program. Unlike some other costs business owners pay and see few if any results for, “this is payment for [concrete] services…it’s tangible,” Spieth said. “They’re simply paying for cleaning services that everyone enjoys—and that helps boost the local economy by making the area more attractive to potential shoppers.”

Still, those disadvantages thus far have proven more desirable to the community than the option of being forced to pay and to submit to reams of red tape. The Good Neighbor program along with annual community cleanup continue to meet the objective of making the neighborhood sparkle.