SAN FRANCISCO — After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis featured San Francisco in a new campaign ad, all eyes are on the city’s efforts to clean up some of its hardest-hit areas.
Every day, dozens of street cleaners from the Department of Public Works are on site cleaning up thousands of pounds of trash from across San Francisco that is often carelessly and illegally disposed of. Your team may see increased investment from Mayor London Breed’s recent budget proposal.
“It’s a clean city, but there’s a lot of trash,” street cleaner John Duport told CBS San Francisco. He has a unique take on city cleanliness that not everyone shares.
“If we stopped work for a few days, the city would grind to a halt, garbage would fill the streets,” Duport told CBS News Bay Area.
In addition to his role as a street cleaner, Duport sees himself as an ambassador for the city, having cleaned every neighborhood in his eight years with the Public Works Department.
There’s one unsurprising item he sees everywhere from the Tenderloin to the Sunset District.
“I find needles all over town,” Duport explained. “That’s the only constant thing; Needles are everywhere.”
It’s an affair of the heart for Duport, who was born and raised in the city by the bay. Every day he patrols the city streets and leaves them better than he found them.
He says he’s equipped with everything he needs, but more staff is the only thing that could significantly improve the San Francisco cleanup.
“No matter how much rubbish I collect, I will never collect it all in one day. And that goes for every person who does what I do,” Duport said. “There just aren’t enough workers and trucks to take out all the trash.”
The Budget Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Wednesday approved a $16.7 million budget increase for the Department of Public Works’ street cleaning division. According to a DPW official, the increase is due to savings from capital projects, deferred truck purchases, salary savings from job vacancies and unused funds.
Duport collects about 2,000 pounds of trash per shift. On Wednesday, he couldn’t drive a block in Richmond County without seeing a new pile lying on a curb.
“Today it’s just a few items. Tomorrow there could be a stack that fills my whole truck,” Duport said. “It seems like people think it’s okay to just dump their rubbish in the bins on every corner and we’re just here to collect it for them.”
Relief might be on the horizon. The overall budget must be approved by the Board of Directors on August 1st.
