Palm Springs Adresses Downtown Cleanliness
Dirty sidewalks, stained benches, dirty and overflowing trash cans…
These are just some of the concerns being expressed by shop owners in Palm Springs, especially with so many tourists coming into town for music festivals over the next month.
“Well, you know we have had some merchants that have told me that they thought there are some cleanliness issues that they would like to see addressed. We’re just making sure that those get addressed,” said Joy Meredith, President of Main Street Palm Springs, part of the Merchants’ Association of Downtown Palm Springs.
Many parts of the downtown have stained sidewalks, dirty sticky benches, dirty trash cans, cigarette butts and other trash littered along the streets. Meredith says especially at a time with so many visitors in town, the city’s image should be at its best.
“Well, the thing is the more people that come of course its going to get dirtier, so we just want to make sure that the work schedules are kept up, steam cleaning of the sidewalks, the repainting of the benches, the trash cans and those sort of things,” Meredith said.
Meredith along with code enforcement, maintenance, and other city leaders met Monday morning to tour some areas.
“So that we can just take a closer look at downtown and see where there are maintenance issues, and other issues that may need to be addressed so that Palm Springs and downtown can look as good as they can,” Meredith said.
“One of our officers did go out there to talk about the outstanding issues, which were accumulation of trash, some trash cans that were over filling,” said Jim Zicaro, Director of Building and Code Enforcement for the city of Palm Springs.
He said the city is giving these issues immediate attention.
“The downtown is a huge priority. we take all complaints very seriously, wether its downtown or any of our citizens, but we want to make sure to we have a clean atmosphere for our tourists and for our businesses,” Zicaro said.
Meredith said the city is doing a good job responding to their concerns.
“They actually have a new plan for steam cleaning the sidewalks already in place, I’m not sure the exact schedule, but we expect to see that pretty much immediately,” Meredith said.
The city also said it would like to remind business owners and community members to let the city know of any ongoing issues. The city said many times they are not aware of problems unless they hear from the community and their concerns.
