Picketing: Extreme Peer Pressure

A few years ago, in an article in the Grants Pass Daily Courier about my problem with the litter and weed problems in this city, our then-City-Manager Laurel Samson said, “We enforce our nuisance codes by peer pressure.”  Trouble was then and still is that almost no peers are willing to apply it.  Like any necessary evil, it doesn’t necessarily win one friends, and it can be dangerous when one tries to correct a disorderly person.  This is why we have police, public nags, to do dangerous jobs like telling someone that one’s property is disorderly and one needs to clean it up.

But our city police presently are forbidden to enforce or even notice property maintenance and other city codes, the better to enforce state laws, one supposes, though our City Charter demands that the Manager enforce all city codes and does not mention state laws.  Our previous manager, David Frasher, in 2006 set up a Code Enforcement Department of non-sworn officers, soon renamed as “Community Service Officers,” (CSOs) supposedly to enforce city codes, but actually to be the place where property nuisance complaints go to die, while complaints about other code violations like lack of sign permits and fees are enforced. 

When nuisances ripen into safety hazards, CSOs eventually cite and abate the hazard.  But even hazards are not enforced against until they become a big enough hassle to clean up that the responsible party might let the city to do it for profit.  They used to charge a 10% of cost administration fee for hazard abatements; it recently was raised to 20%.  After all, people will clean up a minor nuisance or safety hazard with only a warning from a cop, which makes no money for the city. 

          But the purpose of nuisance codes is to stop safety hazards from developing.  When police won’t do their job of necessary nagging, the responsibility for it falls on private people, “peer pressure,” as Ms. Samson said.  This Litter Cleaner has been applying a subtle kind of peer pressure for the last year, demonstrating cleaning of litter on private and public properties.  It has been too subtle, and subtlety doesn’t work for a protest.  

It’s time to make it blatant, by picketing one property at a time, starting with the most egregious offender, a restaurant that piles empty boxes out front of their store under their overhang, an obvious safety problem.  Let’s see how long it takes them to clean up their exterior with a protester holding a sign for a couple of hours per week and handing out leaflets. 

          (It took about a half-hour, and was not pleasant for anyone involved.  The next target is Walmart, which is the biggest offender, will be tougher, and won’t take it so personally.)

I'm done cleaning on the Miracle Mile

Some businesses, along the blocks of the Miracle Mile that I've been cleaning under the sponsorship of KAJO/KLDR, have been slacking off on their own litter cleaning. This shows that, if you do something for others for free, they will stop doing it themselves.  

Not everyone has done so.  Some have actually improved a bit, namely the Fruitdale Grange, which has lately begun renovating their landscaping, and last week cleaned up the bamboo and maple leaves along the north edge of their lot.  

       Then there is a certain restaurant, which has been so slovenly that I started calling police on them for leaving their boxes piled up within sight of passersby, where they could burn if a firebug took the notion, and attractive nuisance back in the corner of the fence that they share with another property.  Their employees also throw their butts everywhere, including the property next door.

An employee confronted me a while back about calling the cops, when I was shaking my head at their having moved their boxes to the front of their building, under their overhang where they would stay dry, burnable and even more accessible.  She said that the cop had been there 5 times and he said that it was okay to stack boxes if they were broken down and flattened.  I see no such allowance for storing such trash on the ground in our nuisance code.  

What became crystal clear to me on the day before Thanksgiving is that regular weekly cleaning does not work as a protest, even while wearing a tunic sign.  One becomes like Mom cleaning house or a servant.  

It was L'il Pantry who made me call it a day and an end, looking at the trash at one end of their lot.  I had noticed the trash on their lot increasing; this was the most butts I'd seen on this edge yet.  It was obvious that their workers never get to this edge of their lot, and apparently picked up little or nothing between my weekly visits.  

When I first started picking up their lot, I gave them a prize for “no old trash” on their property.  Perhaps the worker who liked to keep things clean had quit and no one has taken up the work, a common problem, which means that their owner does not care.  

I get the best reaction from a neighborhood when I clean an area occasionally rather than regularly.  Once a week is too often; people are willing to wait for it rather than do the work themselves.  It actually sets a bad example, implying that weekly is often enough, when litter cleaning needs to be done at least daily, several times a day at restaurants, bars, and convenience stores.  

So I am done with protest cleaning of any private property, and will end my weekly cleaning under the Caveman Bridge.  The City will continue to depend on me to clean it if I keep doing it.  I may picket that restaurant’s unsafe disorderly conduct and the city over their toleration of it.

I owe KAJO/KLDR for the two months or so left on their year of site sponsorship.  I give them credit for two days of cleaning an event of their choice, a $200 value.  This is a service, not a protest.

Monday on the Miracle Mile

Monday, March 17, 2014

On this Monday morning, my daughter needed me to babysit while she went to a meeting at work.  It fit in before my Toastmasters meeting with plenty of time to spare. 

At the Toastmasters meeting, I ended up volunteering to compete in Canyonville on March 29^th, and gave a first run of the speech I would give.  But I ended up having heart pain that Thursday while working in my parents’ yard, spent a night in the hospital being tested, and withdrew from the contest by the following Monday.  No heart damage, but I now carry nitro and aspirin; take a low dose aspirin every night; eat better with an apple a day, less sweetener in my drinks and no fried foods; doubled my morning dog walk to cover the length of the Reinhart Volunteer Park; and try avoid unnecessary stress. 

I had already stopped going to County Commissioner and City Council meetings because they run too late and I got too bored and irritated by them.  I know what’s going to happen.  When the Council surprises me, it’s usually irritating, because they’ve been pretty reasonable lately.  The Commissioners hold no surprises, with only 3 of them, but they are usually irritating for just that reason.  Their unnecessary camera restrictions, aimed at Dale Matthews and Sandi Cassanelli, were the last straw.

Country Weeklies left on the driveway.  They are commonly ignored by residents around town.

Later, at the Miracle Mile, I picked up KAJO/KLDR’s second $250 check for their Super Sponsor site, so they have been on the Super Sponsor page since then.  The station property was very clean except along the front.  Country Weeklies were smashed to pulp across the side street; I keep that clean in at least the front half, since it can be seen by people leaving the station from the time they walk out the front door.

From there, I moved to the Grange property on the corner and cleaned their property and down that side of the street to the station.  Crossed the street; cleaned the other side of the block and proceeded to the next block to clean in front of the little car lot.  Picked up a bucket of trash right there; asked if I could dump their trash in their can; and asked for a donation.

I started on Umpqua bank’s frontage again, thinking about approaching them or the convenience market next door with a full bucket.  There was heavy litter on the market’s property, but I got called to pick up my daughter, and dumped it in the truck.

When I came back, I started south on Parkdale again, cleaned the front of Swiss Precision, and found a black and white handwoven blanket just inside their fence.  Carrying it back to the truck, my middle back started to spasm, and I called it a day.

Pulled away to the Miracle Mile

Monday, March 3rd-9th, 2014

Boy, did I get behind in writing this.  We had a little family reunion over the weekend of March 1^st and 2^nd in Newport, celebrating Mom’s 85^th birthday, so I lost a day of litter cleaning on Sunday.  With writing a couple of gardening articles on Garden Grants Pass the following week, I got two weeks behind in posting about litter cleaning.

During the previous 2 weeks, I talked to Carl Wilson of KAJO/KLDR radio about sponsoring a site, and he decided on a section of the Miracle Mile, as he likes to call the first mile of the Rogue River Highway, where his station is, at 888 R.R. Hwy.  I told him that, for $500 a year, I could do the portion from his station to the light at Parkdale, a bit over a block, both sides, and one block in each direction from the intersection. 

I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew when I estimate new jobs.  I now know that I can do that block + his station + the Fruitdale Grange for that.  I need another sponsor for the other side of Parkdale along Umpqua’s and Grovers’ frontage and the next block of the highway.  All those shrubs and swales hold a lot of trash.

Having an actual Super Sponsor for a site has pulled me away from Redwood Avenue until I get a Super Sponsor there.  I still have only two days available for litter cleaning until I get enough sponsors to start letting gardening customers go.  I can still find time to work the Intersection of the Redwoods, though, and the 6^th and 7^th street bridges. 

I can see I will be doing a lot of cleanup at the Fairgrounds during events on Saturdays.  It’s time to do most of my litter pickup on Saturday-Sunday and gardening on Mondays.  But I like doing litter after Toastmasters.  We’ll see if I can pick up another Super Sponsor.

So after the reunion, I got out Monday after Toastmasters to do the Miracle Mile.  It took all afternoon to do the block from KAJO to Parkdale; I didn’t even get to all of the Grange property. 

First cleaning always takes a lot longer than weekly maintenance, and gives me a good idea of how much I can do for a single sponsor.  An afternoon’s work for initial cleaning is sufficient, I think, and ought to settle down to an hour after a few weeks.  Even that would be woefully underpaid at under $10 per week, but Super Sponsors are supported by regular sponsors and small donors, making this service far more affordable than hiring someone for the same work. 

That’s the theory; we’ll see how it works in practice.  So far, it’s helping to pay my bills; I haven’t had to borrow yet this month.

The next Sunday, it took only 1½ hours to do the same area and a bit more.  It will probably take a little less time this week, on the third cleaning.  The cleaner an area gets, the less trash gets thrown into it.  The more traffic it gets, the more it gets littered and attracts trash.  There are always the few who will throw regardless of neatness.

The Prize for NO OLD LITTER on that block was presented to two clerks at Little Pantry Market and gas station last Sunday.  I was picking up a bit of new litter at that station, but I can honestly say that there was no old litter, and not much new.

After working that block of RR Highway, I turned the corner and did the west side of Parkdale going south.  There is a business there that has the most discrete business sign I’ve ever seen in my life; it took some time for me to find it, etched into the glass of the door, and I had to walk half-way into the property to read its flowing script. 

I got to the end of my bucket before the end of that block, and went back to the truck.  Decided to go the next block on the Miracle mile, but only got through with Umpqua Bank’s frontage before the end of the day.

That was where I found the litter trees, as I like to call white paper bark birches.  Their bark rolls up, flakes off in big pieces, and looks exactly like paper litter.  I'd been finding pieces of it all the way down by KAJO, blown there by the east wind.  I found a stump about a foot tall, hidden in the shrubbery, but visible enough to look like a pile of trash in there.  A hypodermic needle was discarded right in front of it.  Ugly attracts ugly, and some people like their litter to have company.