FELLSMERE — Residents from around Fellsmere flocked to Grant Park off State Street Saturday to reclaim their neighborhood from trash, debris and clutter left behind by mindless litter bugs.
Instead of sleeping in or staying cool in the air conditioning, a couple dozen teens donned latex gloves and grabbed trash and recycling bags and fanned out to cover the blocks between Lincoln and Booker streets.
“I really don’t like to see this trash on the ground,” said 17-year-old Tamicha Laveus, taking a short break from picking litter out from the grass along Booker Street. “How hard is it to put it in the trash can? Apparently harder than I thought.”
She and her friend, 11-year-old Hillary Gomez, paired off to tackle the cleanup, putting off working a yard sale and the Fellsmere Community Garden.
Gomez said she had planned to participate in the yard sale and garden on Saturday, but her mother, Yolanda Gomez, told them about the Grant Park Trash Bash and they decided to help with that instead.
Mixed with the pieces of Styrofoam and plastic debris they collected was a women’s fashion boot – size 9. It appeared to be in good shape – but was missing its mate.
Natali Cerda, who turned 13 on Saturday, spent her birthday at Grant Park picking up trash.
“I rescheduled my birthday,” Cerda said, adding she thought it would be nice to clean up the park and the neighborhood.
Some of the items she and her friend, Anna Downing, 12, found included a pumpkin bucket, a shoe and Nerf football.
And for her troubles, Cerda got stung by a bee, but she didn’t seem to let that get her down.
Downing said she never would have thought she’d have fun picking up trash – but she surprised herself.
“You feel like you’re helping,” she said.
On hand during the event was Vice Mayor Joel Tyson, who years ago served as the president of Keep Indian River Beautiful and organized such neighborhood cleanups throughout the county.
“It was absolutely incredible,” Tyson said of one city-wide cleanup that was done. There was enough discarded items to furnish a home – a refrigerator, stove, sofas, chairs, the whole gamut of housewares.
Tyson said he was happy to see the neighborhood cleanups return to the city – the brainchild of Fellsmere Police Chief Keith Touchberry and Public Works Superintendent Mark Briggs.
Chief Touchberry said Grant Park had developed a reputation in the neighborhood for attracting a rough element during the overnight hours. By morning, alcohol cans and bottles, along with drug paraphernalia and other such trash would be strewn around the park.
And while the Public Works crew would strive to keep the park cleaned up, it wasn’t always easy.
Earlier this year, though, the tide began to shift. The Fellsmere City Council passed an ordinance setting “closed” hours for the city’s parks and issued signs to be installed. Since then, the overnight activity at Grant Park, specifically, has become essentially non-existent, according to the police chief.
Between Chief Touchberry and Briggs, they came up with the idea for the Trash Bash. Briggs, while an employee of the Palm Bay Public Works Department, often worked the city’s own events.
“This is all resident-driven,” Briggs said, surveying the dozens of volunteers scouring the public rights of way for garbage. He voiced satisfaction that Fellsmere’s residents turned out for the Trash Bash – which is more than he could say for Palm Bay’s residents, who seemed only interested in their own stretch of property.
Looking forward, Briggs said he’d like to do a Trash Bash quarterly and is considering his next target – the New York Avenue Ditch.
“New York Ditch is really bad,” he said, adding that if the residents have another area in mind, he’d target that area instead.
“Whatever they want, we’ll do,” Briggs said.
Chief Touchberry said the Trash Bash couldn’t have happened without the support of sponsors Publix – General Manager Randy Strauss, Waste Management and Keep Indian River Beautiful.
