Local teenagers in Venture Crew 400 said that as members of a “more mature” and “dangerous” branch of the Boy Scouts, they’re used to outdoor adventuring. But on Saturday, Philip Caltobiano, Shawn Mitchell and Eric Mitchell faced a very different kind of challenge – scraping gum.
Lots of gum.
Caltobiano and the Mitchells were just three of the 55 locals who pitched in at the Hollister Downtown Association’s downtown cleanup, said HDA Executive Director Brenda Weatherly. At the end of the morning, volunteers had filled 10 trash cans with their collected waste.
Several volunteers said they were stunned by the amount of garbage found.
“It’s amazing how (many) cigarette butts there are,” said Tim Miller, assistant scout master of Boy Scout Troop 400. “When you first come down here, you don’t notice the trash, but then you’re looking and it’s everywhere.”
Some do-gooders even found hidden beer cups likely thrown away after July’s motorcycle rally, Weatherly said.
The downtown cleanup is a longtime HDA tradition, she said. In recent years, what was once a biannual activity became a spring-only event. But Weatherly said she’s gone back to holding two cleanups per year – one in the spring and one in the fall.
“One a year just wasn’t enough,” she said.
During the April event, volunteers do some planting and prepare downtown for the spring, Weatherly said, while the fall cleanup involves more scrubbing, scraping and “doing whatever needs to be done.”
With recent staffing cuts at the City of Hollister, these cleanups are playing a bigger role in making the downtown area attractive. Community Services Director Clay Lee said city workers used to clean downtown regularly, but after budget reductions in 2004 and 2006, they only do cleaning before big events.
“You don’t really notice (the trash),” Weatherly said. ‘But the bottom line is, if we don’t do it periodically, it will just get worse and worse.”
For many of Saturday’s volunteers, the most frequent complaint was gum. Local mom Cassandra Rogers said her 7-year-old son R.J., a Cub Scout, initially wanted to “just look for the fresh stuff” that would be easier to scrape up, but she persuaded him to clean everything he could. The amount of gum was shocking, Rogers said.
“People are just indifferent,” she said. “Why should one person be responsible for everyone else?”
Caltobiano and the Mitchells agreed that gum seemed to be everywhere, but they said helping with the cleanup has made them more aware of their own garbage.
“I don’t think I’ll ever spit gum on the floor again,” Caltobiano said.
