Ward 5 Alderman Joe Bartolomucci is talking trash again. This time, though,
it’s not some notion to use buoys to prevent terrorists from entering everybody’s
favorite fishing hole on Lake Springfield or refusing to pay the city’s phone
bill because of one sagging line on North Grand. This time, it’s literal trash
— downtown litter. And he wants anybody caught littering to get a ticket and
a sizeable fine.
Bartolomucci made this announcement at City Council, and followed it with a proposal to have Sangamon County Jail trustees dispatched downtown to pick up litter every morning.
In its first meeting since last Saturday night’s fracas outside the martini bar 11 West (in which Springfield Police Department made three arrests and used pepper spray to disperse a crowd), aldermen sent back to committee an ordinance that would have granted a 3 a.m. liquor license to Catch 22, located underneath 11 West. That proposed ordinance apparently inspired Bartolomucci to expound on what he sees as unfair assumptions that downtown bars, 14 of which have 3 a.m. liquor licenses, are responsible for the trash problem downtown.
“I think the public perception is that people are drinking in these bars and leaving the bars with open liquor in bottles or cans and throwing them wherever they please,” he said, adding that the litter comes from people who bring packaged liquor downtown. “They’re drinking it on the way downtown, they’re drinking it in parking lots and on the streets and disposing of this trash and busting beer bottles, and I want to know where the police are at. I’ve asked the police department till I’m blue in the face: why aren’t these people being cited with citations and ultimately fined? I think if you smash a beer bottle against a wall and you’re fined $75 or $100, you’re going to think twice about doing it again.”
Later, he reiterated his position, saying he wants people ticketed for public urination, too.
“This town is a travel destination, and first impressions are lasting ones,” he says. “If you or I wanted to travel to San Diego, for example, and we get to the spots we want to see as tourists and we see trash blowing around, that really turns a tourist off.”
Ralph Caldwell, assistant chief of police, says it’s tough to catch people littering or relieving themselves because officers have to respond to more serious calls. Even if dispatch gets a call reporting such an offense in progress, “by the time we get there, that individual is finished,” Caldwell says.
He emphasized that the downtown area is a special priority for Chief Don Kliment, who took some flack early in his tenure for elimination of SPD’s popular downtown horse patrol. Kliment promised downtown business owners that he would increase police presence through bike patrols, and he has done so, Caldwell says.
Still, after Bartolomucci’s statements at council, officers have been again encouraged to look for people littering or urinating downtown.
“Different watches have been reminded to concentrate on that and pay more attention,” Caldwell says. “There’s an ongoing effort to keep downtown safe and clean.”
Bartolomucci’s proposal to have jail trustees pick up trash was apparently welcomed by Mayor Tim Davlin.
“If you can convince the sheriff’s office, I’d love to have you do that. Good thinking,” Davlin said.
Sheriff Neil Williamson says he can’t guarantee that the jail will always have a suitable population for such a task (trustees have to be sentenced to county jail for a non-violent offense), but said he would be “more than happy to work with them.”
“If we have ’em then they can use ’em,” Williamson says.
There’s a question of finding funds to pay someone to supervise the inmates, but “usually we can work that out,” he says. “I always look at the glass half-full.”
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2004.
