Peekskill Officials to Address Downtown Trash Build Up

In some cases, one man’s garbage can be another man’s treasure.

But in most cases, trash is just trash and Peekskill Councilwoman Drew Claxton said she’s seeing too much of it during Monday’s Common Council work session.

Claxton said the trash situation downtown really caught her attention last Sunday.

“I don’t care what block I was on, there were bags of garbage everywhere,” Claxton said. “It was Sunday morning, some of it had been out since Saturday afternoon. I know we don’t pick up, nor can we pick up—I understand where we’re at—on Sunday. But a lot of it is household garbage.”

Claxton fears that residents or anyone entering the downtown area will be turned off by the sight of trash piles cluttering the city.

“You can go to South Street, you can go to park street, you can go to Main Street, you can go to James Street....everywhere,” Claxton said.

Acting City Manager Brian Havranek said it is a matter of building owners educating their tenants and the citing fining owners whose buildings continue to be a problem.

Hravanek added that trash pickup takes place downtown at about 10 a.m., which gives people enough time bring their trash outside for pickup on the day that it's scheduled. Hravanek said he’s sent email out to the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Business Improvement District to get the word out to people that trash needs to be put out Monday, by 9:30 a.m.

“I think through the BID and the Chamber and through the city, we’ll just have to do some type of a mass notification collectively and see where that takes us,” Havranek said.

“We have to look at the budget if we’re going to do something else on weekends,” Hravanek said. “But at a minimum, I think we need to at least get the word out and see where that takes us. That, we can do without a lot of expense.”

Editor's Note: The name of the acting city manager of Peekskill was misspelled in an earlier version of this story. The spelling has been corrected.