Anyone who says there’s no sense in doing spring cleaning in early winter has not driven or walked downtown Lynn streets and around corners clogged with trash.
Walk Union Street past the tunnel to Mount Vernon Street and you will see trash packed against a chain-link fence. A discarded shopping cart and trash line Central Avenue’s gutter.
The city can’t wait until April or May to send out the sweepers or the broom brigade. Lynn residents and visitors to the city deserve and need a clean city before February snows bring the ugly sight of exhaust-blackened drifts festooned with garbage.
Like every other community on the planet, Lynn has been through a lot this year, with coronavirus killing people and locking down places where people gather to eat, talk, laugh and enjoy entertainment.
A relatively-inexpensive way to provide people with relief from COVID-19 doom and gloom is to give them a cleaner city. A swept street and trash-free sidewalks send a message that the city is doing its job to keep public spaces clean. That is a message worth sending at a time when residents have fewer opportunities to see their tax dollars at work because they cannot walk into the North Common Street library or enjoy unrestricted City Hall access.
The cleanup effort should extend to the city’s cemeteries to ensure they are not filling up with wind-blown trash. In keeping with the “broken window” urban renewal theory aimed at reducing crime by keeping property maintained, keeping trash out of Lynn’s historic cemeteries prevents them from becoming drug use hangouts and vandalism targets.
Well-swept streets also send an unspoken message about everyone doing their part to improve the community. Clean streets send a reminder that it is not OK to discard a mask on the sidewalk and it is OK to sweep the sidewalk in front of our homes.
Even as the battle to overcome COVID-19 rages on, Lynn is making visible progress in becoming a more prosperous city. Construction is underway on Oxford and Buffum streets and Central Square is poised to host a new housing development project.
Just as everyone is being asked to do their part to vanquish coronavirus, we all need to do our part to make Lynn, and every community, a better place in which to live and work.
The city can do its part in this improvement effort by cleaning local streets, starting downtown. Please.
