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The Niagara Beautification Commission held its annual city-wide cleanup on Saturday and I had the privilege of participating. Somewhere between 200 and 300 people spent several hours picking up trash.
The enormity of the event makes it a spectacle. I spent time cleaning up near 19th Street and Ashland Avenue with Trent Hamilton, Uniquia Lewis, Bryant Brown, Antoine White and the SNUG crew.
SNUG has made a huge difference. With We All We Got and law enforcement, drug shootings are massively down. So are overdose deaths, in part because of NARCAN being available in every bodega thanks to Community Missions.
The overgrown grass lot we focused on is in bad need of a mowing. I know someone said they called DPW and asked for it to be mowed but the Clean Team is down to two workers and one day’s notice is not enough.
Of course the snarky comments still happen “how come they can wreck a garden rather than mowing a lot?” It’s a matter of reasonable expectations and timing even if the appropriate move with that messy garden would have been to ask the NBC to help out.
If you drive around the city today, you will see the enormity of the effort on multiple street corners, whether out on the boulevard where Tanya Barone, family and friends cleaned up, along Portage Road where Nasreem Aktar and folks from Red Door Realty and Naz 716 worked or even along Main Street where the Niagara Charter School chipped in. There are full refuse bags everywhere.
Casella’s will pick them all up.
I saw a crew of Kalfas Kids as well as a zeal of Zajacs (Seriously, zeal is a collective noun for zebra but David Zajac was there with a big collection of his family and friends.)
Of course Bridgette Myles was there as well, as were Noah Munoz and Karen Mock from the Heritage Team real estate brokerage.
Vincent Cauley was volunteering for NBC as a board member (I am too) registering people for lunch. I ended up serving alongside Sheila Zuni and Vincent before Noah chipped in.
If Jim Perry, Traci Bax or John Kinney was around I didn’t see them but Sean Mapp showed up with family in tow. He’s running for County Legislature.
When I saw DPW Superintendent Kenny Tompkins he was getting an earful about how to properly fill potholes from a constituent who obviously knew more about everything. That’s the thing about Tompkins job – everyone gives him hell all the time about things he can’t control.
I even busted his chops about a cracked bumper cover on his SUV only to hear him admit he hit a pothole near 22nd and Ferry. I had to throw the cheapshot. “Can’t you call 311 and get that fixed?” He laughed.
All those different political candidates, endorsed, unendorsed, Republican, Democrat were congenial, rowing in the same direction and even posing for photos. We could make a huge difference in the city if we all rowed in the same direction more often.
The after party at the Niagara Aquarium plaza was a great event as well. Tony Poletti of The Marketside Restaurant donated lunch, including green salad, trays of herb-baked chicken, vegetarian egg sandwiches, sausage and peppers.
