UNIT/Businesses Tackle Main Street Trash

Luis Tomas, founder of European Furniture & Gifts at 213 Main St. in 1978, likes the trash enforcement effort the city's Unified Neighborhood Inspection Team is running downtown.
Tomas sweeps his front entrance every morning, so he liked it when Rich Antous of the UNIT sent all downtown business owners a letter telling them to sweep up the trash outside their businesses.
"We all want to keep it clean," Tomas said. "We sweep every day. It's only a little bit, but if we don't, it gets worse the next day."
Antous calls that the "broken window" syndrome, meaning if a person sees a broken window in a house one day, they'll likely see a second one broken the next day. If they stop and fix that broken window today, tomorrow the second window won't be broken. He attributes that theory to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Tomas said at its worse, people who live on Main Street put their household trash in the city's street garbage cans, filling them to overflowing. It leaves no place for people walking by to put their trash.
The UNIT inspects those garbage bags for names and addresses, and fines the people who dumped them.
Sometimes people throw mattresses out behind the stores rather than dispose of them properly. A mattress one day leads to a second mattress and a TV the next day, Antous said.
"Somebody dropped off a mattress a couple of weeks ago. I think a couple of people started to sleep on it," Tomas said. He picked up the mattress and threw it away on one of his dump trips.
"That's a good citizen," Antous said.
At the Family Dollar Store, Manager Maria Granados thanked Antous for the letter and for encouraging her to look after her dumpsters. The dumpsters had attracted household trash, liquor bottles, mattresses and old televisions, Granados said.
"I'm trying and trying, but sometimes it's hard to work and look after the dumpsters out back," Granados said. She started locking the dumpsters, which keeps people from driving by and throwing their household trash inside. It also seems to stop people from piling garbage against them.
"She got it under control," Antous said. "It's clean now."