It’s time to take pride in cleaning up your hometown.

Socorro City Councilors are all for it and suggested several ideas that could turn into reality during its last week’s city council meeting.

Councilor Deborah Dean wondered if the city’s beautification community couldn’t be resurrected to help clean up the community.

While the committee’s main focus was beautification and landscaping, Mayor Ravi Bhasker said the committee wasn’t focused on cleaning up the blight and abandoned old burnt-out buildings and trailers.

To clean up those areas, the city needs to work through the courts to get the property cleaned up. Bhasker referenced the Sands Motel, where the city had to work through the court system to get rid of the abandoned property.

While the city waits for the court to act, it could take up to a year before anything can happen – especially when it involved private property.

Code Enforcement Officer Chris Carrillo said the city can ask the property owner to voluntarily clean up their property. Sometimes they can enlist the help of relatives or friends, but most often the property remains abandoned.

Recently, he said, the city crews cleaned two properties and gathered more than 17 tons of debris.

While councilors concurred, the city doesn’t have jurisdiction over cleaning up private property, several suggested perhaps have a cleanup day in the city twice a year – rather than once.

Bhasker reminded councilors that it takes a lot of work from the city’s waste management crews to make cleanup day happen.

Another suggestion was to have each neighborhood have a cleanup day, where a roll-off dumpster could placed that all the neighborhood could utilize.

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Councilor Nick Flemming. “But you must remember we have a lot of senior citizens who can’t move some of their stuff. And we can’t go on their property to help them out.”

The suggestion of placing a roll off dumpster in a neighborhood was a good idea, Councilor Anton Salome noted. “I think that maybe if we just tried a little experiment with placing a dumpster in an area, the neighborhood might help. We could see what accumulates in the dumpster in a week.”

Bhasker noted citizens want the community to clean up its image. “Right now, it’s a process that involves the courts – especially with personal property. We just need to get the manpower to get something like this done. We’ll need to start working on this.”

Bhasker said cleaning up the community would be an agenda topic during a future meeting.

 

Wanda Moeller