City cleaning crew deals with making Downtown beautiful
DOWNTOWN SM Hours before the carts roll out and shop doors open, Linwood Fenderson is power-washing the city’s streets and sidewalks.
It’s a side of the world famous Third Street Promenade that remains largely unseen — the approximately 20 city workers who rise and shine in the early morning hours, scrubbing the ground, taking out the trash and spraying deodorizers where homeless and drunken patrons have left their marks.
It’s a job that these workers — many of whom were born and bred in Santa Monica — hold in the highest regard, but in some cases, a respect that is not returned by the users of the promenade.
“The health of the business community is on our uppermost mind,” said Promenade & Parking Structure Maintenance Supervisor Eddie Greenberg. “To be on the promenade maintenance crew, it requires dedication to the community.”
A city employee of 12 years, Fenderson was power-washing the promenade Wednesday morning around 7 a.m. Fenderson started his day three hours earlier, blowing the dirt and grime out of cracks in the ground and ultimately covering about five to eight city blocks by the end of his shift.
Waving to a homeless man carrying a cardboard cutout sign, Fenderson said he has established a good rapport with the promenade’s down-and-out residents.
“As long as I treat them with respect, they treat me with respect,” Fenderson said.
Spraying hot water at such a high pressure, the promenade regulars know to get out of Fenderson’s way when he’s toiling away. He only occasionally runs into an out-of-town homeless person unaware of the protocol.
The first wave of workers start their shifts at 3 a.m., while the majority come in at about 6 a.m. The evening crew begins at 2 p.m.
These workers are responsible for doing nearly everything imaginable when it comes to maintenance in Downtown Santa Monica, from Wilshire Boulevard to Colorado Avenue, from Ocean Avenue to Seventh Street. Their duties include dumping nearly 250 trash cans across their target region four times a day, power-cleaning the city sidewalks and the Third Street Promenade, sweeping and scrubbing the promenade in one of their several environmentally friendly machines, cleaning the stairwells and bathrooms in the parking garages, and even spraying deodorizers to kill the bacteria in urine off of trash cans and building entryways.
In Parking Structure 4 on the 1300 block of Second Street is a small storage room housing all of the chemicals used to clean Downtown Santa Monica.
Three to four shelves line one wall, holding environmentally safe cleaning products, ranging from graffiti remover to natural deodorizer, and from degreaser to furniture polisher.
One of the more interesting items sitting on these shelves is a product called Enz-Away, a natural bio-detergent system that can be used to clean bathrooms and carpet, even remove all organic stains from laundry.
For the maintenance workers, one of the many uses for Enz-Away is to remove the bacteria and smell of urine. Whenever a person urinates on a trash can, the bin is replaced temporarily while it soaks in Enz-Away. A few hours later, the chemical is washed off the trash can and placed back in its original spot. In emergencies, for example if a person urinated in front of a business, a worker is sent out to spray the Enz-Away and wait for about 15 minutes for the solution to do its magic. The chemical is then washed away, said Susan Trier, staff assistant for Promenade & Parking Structure Maintenance.
Some spots are hit more often than others by serial public urinaters and the workers check these areas frequently.
Another odd yet necessary chemical, called Total Solution, is used to clean up feces. The spray dries up the feces and the spot where the defecation occurred is sprayed with Enz-Away. Total Solution is used about three to four times a week, said Jose “Jay” Aguilar, an equipment operator.
John Harris has accumulated a lot of mileage during his time with the city.
In his 14 years as the operator of the promenade all-in-one sweeper and scrubber, Harris has recorded more than 600,000 miles on the machine. The fact that he has no accidents during those 14 years is second to none, Greenberg praised.
The sweeper/scrubber forces 300 to 750 pounds of pressure on the ground, picking up nearly everything stuck to the ground, including gum. The machine holds about 95 gallons of water added to 5 gallons of degreaser and recycles the water.
Each of the machines cost $55,000.
Many of the promenade maintenance workers have been city employees for decades, including Greenberg who will celebrate 30 years with the city later this year.
With the “dean of clean” embroidered on this jacket, Greenberg takes his job seriously and proudly, showing no shame that he is the face behind the maintenance of Santa Monica. He came to the city in 1977 and assumed supervision over downtown maintenance in 1988.
Aguilar came to the city as a part-time worker at 17-years -old, cleaning the beach and later transferring to the promenade. Now the equipment operator, Aguilar is 34-years-old, attending Los Angeles Trade Tech College, in hopes of attaining a degree in management and labor studies. He is certified in water treatment.
For him, the best part of the job is seeing the final product — clean sidewalks and smiling faces. The most difficult, is working around the promenade’s homeless population, especially those who seem to be mentally insane. It’s also difficult dealing with the occasional deaths on the promenade. In the past few years, one person has jumped off one of the parking garages to his death, while another person was found hanging in another garage.
The workers here see everything.
On July 1, at the beginning of the fiscal year, the city will be reorganized to create a new Community Maintenance Division. Under the reorganization, the promenade maintenance, which is currently handled by the Solid Waste Division, will be shifted to Community Maintenance.
New department head Elaine Polachek, who currently is serving double duties as the Community Maintenance Director and Open Space Manager, has been meeting with Greenberg and his staff in developing the new department.
For the past eight months, Bayside District Corporation, a private/public entity that oversees Downtown Santa Monica, has also been studying different ways to enhance the downtown area, making sure it remains vital as it has been for the past 20 years.
“We have done a significant amount of outreach to consumers, to residents, property owners, business owners about what they want to see in downtown,” said Bayside District Corporation Executive Director Kathleen Rawson.
Among the concerns raised were traffic, parking, issues related to the homeless and cleanliness.
Part of Bayside’s assessment has been to determine what additional resources need to be allocated to help Greenberg and his staff and whether it would be in their best interest to outsource for the occasional deep cleaning.
“Say you have a carpet in your house that you vacuum once a week, but once in a while you have someone to steam clean,” Rawson said. “We’re talking about specific in-depth deep treatments of areas from time to time.”
“So the day-to-day maintenance is more doable for the crew,” she added.
The assessment isn’t meant to curtail Greenberg and the promenade staff’s efforts, but it should supplement their efforts.
“It’s really a coordinated effort,” Rawson said. “I don’t want to duplicate effort.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 19, 2007. Read the original PDF.