It’s time to sweep the streets.
A local civic group is encouraging residents to get out and join a large-scale, volunteer cleanup before the winter sets in.
The Madison-Marine-Homecrest Civic Association has organized a “No Litter Week,” from Nov. 25 to Dec 1, with a cleanup effort to cover the area between Stuart to E. 12th streets and from Avenues U to P.
The civic association is hoping to get as many residents as possible involved in the campaign to clean up an area of some 140 blocks in order to make the streets more presentable — and keep them that way, according to the group’s leader.
“We’re hoping to make the neighborhood look more clean and attractive, and if it does that, maybe it will encourage people to keep it that way and discourage people who drive down the block from dropping their coffee cup,” said association president Ed Jaworski.
The cleaning week will target common litter that plagues many of the streets in the area, especially the busy shopping thoroughfare Avenue U.
“We’re talking about burger wrappers, coffee cups, pieces of paper in your hand — things that you can easily throw in the trash basket,” Jaworski said.
At its monthly meeting on Oct. 18, the group coordinated the cleanup with two representatives from the city’s Department of Sanitation, as well as principals from five local schools and leaders of the local Boy Scouts troop.
This includes Madison High School, Marine Park Junior High, Good Shepherd Academy, St. Edmund Prep, and Cunningham Junior High, as well as Boy Scout Troop 446 from St. Brendan’s Church.
The schools have their own community service programs and the civic association hopes to incorporate that into the cleanup week, according to Jaworski.
“We’re looking to dovetail it with the schools’s community service,” he said.
The cleanup week is right after Thanksgiving, when most of the fallen leave should have been collected, leaving space for residents to work ahead of the snow, according to Jaworski.
“A lot of the leaf blowers will have wrapped up before then, so leaves should be out of the picture,” he said.
