When the neighborhood clothing drop box becomes a dumping ground, what can be done?
Councilman Chad West discussed as much under a public Facebook post lamenting the state of a donation box at Home Depot on Fort Worth Avenue. “Home Depot: Are you operating an illegal dump site in your parking lot?” queried one neighborhood resident, who tagged West in his post. The original poster also points out that in this instance there is no indication of who owns the box, thus no one accountable aside from the property owner.
“These charity boxes are a scam, anyway,” writes the OP. “Someone slips the store manager some bills to get permission to place these transient and trash magnets on the property. Then a for-profit sells the ‘clothing and shoes’ gathered.”
West responded, noting that this problem has been discussed in meetings and that there are two different strategies he’s looking at to, as he puts it, “clean up this trash situation,” a short term strategy and a long-term strategy.
“The short term strategy will continue to involve 311 calls by neighbors to issue citations for problem collection sites,” the councilman notes. “Per Officer Broadnax, the neighborhood code compliance officer, several neighbors did put in 311 complaints today [Tuesday], which prompted code to go on site and to issue citations. This is how the system should work, and I’m glad it’s working.”
As for the long run …
“The longer-term solution is for the city to come up with a permitting system for these donation sites, to restrict the number of sites that can be located within close proximity, and to pull permits when they are not acting appropriately and cleaning up their drop off areas. As you can probably imagine, creating a new permit process is not an overnight initiative, and will require a change to city code and a vote by Full Council after the ordinance is drafted. As we discussed in the community meeting, that is currently in the works.”
