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SCHENECTADY
City eyes volunteer help for litter, graffiti cleanup
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

A swath of garbage, hundreds of feet wide, is gracing one of the entrances to Central Park.
That section of the city’s jewel has also been covered in graffiti in an attack that stretches from the city’s best baseball field to the bathrooms in the center of the park.
More than 60 graffiti tags cover every sign and building on the Fehr Avenue side of the park.
And the city doesn’t have the money to clean it up.
    Luckily, volunteers and a few arrests are going to help.
    Police caught several young teenagers who are accused of painting graffiti on the city’s equipment shed, one of several buildings hit recently. They will pay restitution, city Supervisor William Macejka said.
    The county’s Center for Juvenile Justice called Macejka to ask if the children could clean up their work themselves. Macejka said no.
    “We have unions and stuff. We can’t let them come in,” he said.
    The children will pay $1,787 to cover the cost of city labor and materials instead.
    Work will begin next week and should take about two days, Macejka said.
    “But that’s just our building, that one building,” he said. “They got lots of other buildings.”
    Police have not yet charged anyone in connection to the other graffi ti tags.
    While city officials have not yet figured out how to cover the cost of cleaning up those tags, Acting Mayor Gary McCarthy has worked out a way to get the litter cleaned up. He’s asking volunteers for the fi rst of many “days of service” to the city. So far, youth groups and JROTC high school students have signed up, while Upper Union Street business owners have offered pizza, water and other essentials.
Litter was spread across the entrance when city workers fi lled the area with a mountain of snow. All that snow has fi nally melted away, leaving behind a visual recording of what the city’s streets look like before street sweepers go through.
    There are fl attened Stewart’s coffee cups, fragments of candy wrappers and dozens of crushed soda and beer cans. Plastic juice bottles abound. There’s even some cloth — a purple shirt, a blue blanket and a small white rug are scattered along the pavement.
    Plastic Price Chopper grocery bags made it through the winter intact, as did one CSEA union beer cozy. A windshield wiper, perhaps testament to a mid-blizzard crisis for one driver, is laying alone in the middle of the park entrance. Empty coolant and oil bottles are also strewn about the lot.
    There’s only a thin layer of trash on the ground, but it stretches through both parking lots and all the way back to the edge of the hill at the top of the park.
    City workers will haul the trash away once it’s collected. The city will also provide some rakes and gloves.
    The ground is too wet for city equipment to simply scrape up the trash, Deputy City Clerk Chuck Thorne said.
    “Nobody could get in there with equipment without wrecking the lot,” he said. “I had cut through there a few times and it was like little lakes there.”
    The ground has finally dried, and volunteers will gather on May 14. City officials set the date for late in the spring in hopes of letting the ground dry out first.
    In the meantime, the city is hanging a sign at the site advertising the event.
    “So many people are calling complaining about the condition of the lot,” Thorne said. “At least the sign will show we haven’t forgotten about the lot.”
    McCarthy will turn to volunteers for other work, too, Thorne said.
    “We’re calling it the first Day of Service,” he said. “ ........................>>>>..............>>>>...........................................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00103&AppName=1

And they got a great image of the vandals on the security cameras, right?

Another feel good story? Put it in the "renaissance" file. The entire park is a dump because of the feeding center, pit bulls and public pool. The gang bangers were arrested and must pay restitution. So let them pay for the City workers cleanup. Now we have to minimize the costs to these morons? If the parents can't pay in full throw the gang bangers in prison.

     While we're talking about Central Park-bring back Tuesday In The Park. This was canned by Mayor Stratton. If you get decent people using the park this type of vandalism will be minimized.