FRANK LEWIS
PDT Staff Writer
The Portsmouth City Health Department has responded to a request to clean up overgrown brush, trash, and more from a property on Armstrong Place in Portsmouth.
Carol Hieneman was tired of watching a vacant and overgrown lot in her neighborhood be used for prostitution and drug deals, so she cleared it off, piling the huge stacks of brush on a property near her home. That prompted the city to send out a crew consisting of probationers from Portsmouth Municipal Court to begin the tedious process of filling truckload after truckload with debris that Hieneman had cleared away.
“They’re (probationers) working off their community service, helping us clean up this brush pile,” Leslie Young of the City Health Department said. “It’s a complaint-driven deal today. Lots of times we just patrol around and look for things to pick up, but today is complaint-driven. So we are just trying to resolve this issue.”
Young said she projects the job will take several days of workers working all day to complete the cleanup. Derrick Carpenter, Dylan LeMaster, and Janet West were on the job, hoping to get a lot done before the heat of mid-day, and Young said she was expected a couple of more workers by afternoon.
“If we could get more crews on it it would probably happen a little faster,” Young said. “Sometimes we even have volunteers from the community to help us do these things. But today they are all from the Probation Department.”
Young said each time the truck is filled, it is taken to the transfer station for disposal of the debris.
“We keep weight on it, obviously, to keep track of what we’re dumping,” Young said. “And the city picks up the bill for that. So this is an issue that a lot of money is going into, one way or another. We won’t stop until the job is done. We’ll just keep coming back until it’s finished.”
Young said it is not advisable for people to take it upon themselves to clear vacant property and to pile the debris from that cleanup on someone else’s property.
“My recommendation for people who want to take matters into their own hands and help the community clean up something, that they contact either the Health Department or the Service Department, and we can direct them as to where they can dump the stuff, as opposed to on someone else’s property,” Young said.
“They can call for special pickup from the Service Department, and it can be added to their water bill if they want to do it that way; they can call us and try to get us to come and help out, just to bring it to our attention. It depends on what it is they have to clean up, as to where it has to go. But we always have answers. If we don’t have the answers, we know someone who does. So we can find those answers. So we recommend that people don’t take it into their own hands, especially to this extent. Instead maybe let us help out or point them in the right direction.”
Frank Lewis may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 232, or at flewis@heartlandpublications.com.
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I'm sure they will now have a little meeting amoung themselves and be instructed on not making comments like that in the general public.
I live near Mound Park where drug deals happen there everyday, especially by the ballfield area. I, like Ms. Hieneman, walk the alley and around Mound Park picking up trash to help cleanup the neighborhood. I don't expect the city to do this because this trash problem is a daily occurance.
What bothered me about the followup article published on 6/29 is how the "City" gave instructions on how to properly handle such a problem. I know how Ms. Hieneman feels, you won't get a response let alone get any action taken towards problem. I went for a 1.5 years trying to get a major pothole filled in my alley, calls made, no responses, I had to block a city truck patching street pothole to beg them to help me out. The patching crew checked it out, filled the big pothole, they claimed never seeing a work order to fix it.
Anyhow, thanks Ms. Hieneman for taking on this nasty eyesore ..as they say, if you want something done..do it yourself!.
I was also quite amused at the picture of the "crew" that Ms. Young had over there. I believe that they worked at the site for the total of about 1.5 hours, taking away perhaps 3 truck loads. She was quite irate and disrespectful to me when we spoke on the site, but her boss, Andy, apologized for her actions and that's good enough for me. They did not return, either. Yet I have still been there, working every day -- still finding used needles and crack pipes.
With the damage the recent storm has done with the trees of our city, I doubt that I will see her or her crew of helpers any time soon. Like I said before, since the property where I placed the debris is scheduled to be demolished, why don't they get the proper equipment like bulldozers to do the job instead of probationers that were not equipped to do the job. Those folks needed tools and shovels and at least a decent pair of leather gloves to do that work as I told Ms. Young during our brief encounter.
As far as me being arrested for cleaning out trash and mowing the grass, this is not the only site where I've been. I've also cleaned up the alley behind Speed-Way that runs into Linden Ave. The grass there was 5 feet tall and you couldn't even see if you were going to run over a child on the sidewalk. So, if you live in MY neighborhood and can't or won't mow your grass, you can expect to see me there soon. I've never had anyone complain about me cleaning their place up for them -- FREE. What a hoot that would be! Illegal mowing! Illegal weed removal! I got a good laugh outta this article, as well as everyone I've spoken with about it. Thank you, Daily Times for running it. And thank you, too, commenter, for your encouragement.