Beach stuck with high chewing gum cleanup bill

A focus on costly removal of chewing gum stains won Miami Beach approval last week, with two city commissioners volunteering to help do the cleanup and one of them suggesting hiring homeless workers.

Gum stains are seen throughout the city, said Commissioner David Suarez.

“We have a constellation of gum stains on our sidewalks and they seem to never go away and it just gets worse and worse,” he said. “I had requested public works to come up with a program that would specifically target gum stains throughout Miami Beach on an annual basis. There was a study that public works did that … we’re going to purchase three high-powered pressure washers specifically for gum stain removal and have dedicated staff for this removal on an annual basis.”

According to the item’s analysis, Commissioner Suarez proposed the city implement a pilot, semi-annual gum stain removal program.

“We went ahead and at the request of Commissioner Suarez did an analysis of equipment that would specifically target the removal of gum stains on sidewalks,” said Joe Gomez, public works director.

The city would be divided into three zones: South Beach, Mid-Beach and North Beach. Each would have an employee and a machine, said Mr. Gomez.

“The cost of that would be adding three additional employees to our labor force,” Mr. Gomez said. “On top of that it would require some equipment to be able to move the special machine and then the equipment costs, so sum total is about $214,500 for the additional headcount, and $154,500 for the equipment, including vehicles that are needed to haul the machinery.”

Commissioner Joseph Magazine supported the initiative but didn’t like hiring three more people, as he explained after confirming how many employees the city has.

“I’m hard pressed, very hard pressed to think that on a sporadic basis, we can’t find out of 2,600 employees, three employees that on an intermittent basis will go around and collect and power wash our streets for gum,” said Commissioner Magazine. “We should all take pride in how our city works, and if it has to be me out there one evening per weekend using [the equipment needed to remove gum stains] in my South Beach area – I’m sure one of my colleagues, if we can’t find city employees to do it – will take their respective areas.”

“Couldn’t be more supportive of this,” he said, “but as stewards of taxpayer money, we need to start learning to do more – not with less – but more with the same, and I challenge us to find creative ways that we can clean up gum in our city with these new machines without adding three dedicated gum cleaners.”

It is money well spent, said Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez. “From my experience being here over 10 years, we added an additional cleaning crew but we are really underfunded with boots on the ground. We have a lot of management positions, but we don’t have our people out on the streets.

We added one cleaning crew, but it’s not enough. While it might seem ridiculous to hire three people to target gum stains, I’m supportive. I’d like to actually co-sponsor it. But what I would say is maybe it’s not just the gum, maybe they’re not just gum stain removers, maybe they have some other things you know also that they address.”

Commissioner Tanya K. Bhatt, also said she’d volunteer to power wash but elaborated, saying people treat things as they perceive them to be and if the sidewalks aren’t taken care of, people will continue to treat it as such.

Commissioner Bhatt also suggested hiring homeless people who want jobs. “The other thing I want to ask about, because I thought this existed, I think there’s a program where folks who come into the city through our homeless outreach who are looking for work and to sort of set themselves back on that path have been hired by the city’s public works crew, and if there’s a way to enhance that possibility to bring more people in off the streets and start them off in a new, better path, I would highly encourage that to be something that is taken into account.”