Story Photos
 Photo by Greg Ebersole Inmate work crew member Jimmy Delameter trims bushes Saturday morning near the Kelso train depot. |
Inmates to clean up Kelso: City hires work crews at 'bargain' price
Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:20 PM PDT
By Amy M. E. Fischer
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E-mail this articleFor three years, the city of Kelso's landscaping and trash-pickup program has consisted mostly of responding to citizens' complaints about specific parts of town looking too scruffy.
But last week, the City Council approved a $25,000 year-long contract with Cowlitz County Offender Services for jail-inmate work crews to pick up litter, clean up reservoirs and do landscaping on city property three times a year. The county is charging Kelso $45 an hour for roughly a dozen workers, which city officials called an "incredible" bargain.
The work crews will visit Kelso in April, June and October.
"It just seemed like a more efficient thing to be more pro-active than reactive and go ahead and plug it into a schedule so the public can be happier," Kelso Public Works Director David Sypher said Friday. "The whole point is to offer a higher level of cleanliness and organization in the city of Kelso."
The new approach makes sense to Kelso resident Rod Wright, who regularly gripes at City Council meetings about overgrown blackberry bushes encroaching on city streets.
"The citizens shouldn't have to call or go to the council meeting and voice their displeasure. It's something the city should know they regularly gotta do," said Wright, 78, adding that sometimes he prunes the brambles himself.
Sypher said that in recent years, there hasn't been any money specifically budgeted for landscaping and so the work wasn't regularly scheduled.
From 1998 until 2005, when Kelso and Longview's parks departments merged services in an attempt to save money, landscaping and tree-trimming were handled by the Parks Department. When the two parks departments split in January 2005, the work wasn't re-assigned to any department, Sypher said Friday.
Since then, the city has been hiring jail crews on an as-needed basis to work at parks, bridges, reservoirs and the airport. In 2006, the city spent roughly $17,000 for inmates to do various projects. So far this year, the city has paid Offender Services $15,600, according to city documents.
Mayor Don Gregory said the city used to hire student summer work crews, but federal and state funds to pay for the program evaporated.
"It's certainly been a citizens' priority and it's been a council priority to get things cleaned up. We simply don't have the manpower on staff," Gregory said.
Interim City Manager Paul Brachvogel arranged for jail crews to come consistently because his goal is to "address things that are bugging our citizens," Gregory said.
The inmate work crews will tackle brush and weeds around town, including the train depot, the bridges, city fence lines, the old water treatment plant, the Burcham Street stairs, the Academy Street stairs and various reservoirs. They'll pick up trash off streets throughout town, too.
"I hope people notice. I hope it has an impact, and I hope people take their own responsibility and clean up their own yards and messes and help out," Gregory said Friday. "It's our city --- everyone's city."
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