Woman to city: Clean up this mess

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - A woman showed up at Wednesday's City Commission meeting to complain about the trash being thrown out near her home.

"I felt I needed to take off from my job today to let you know we pay taxes," Earlene Pierce says. "We do not want to live in garbage."

Earlene gave city commissioners an earful, but afterward they agreed with her.

"It is a problem and we don't appreciate it either," says Commissioner Nan Whaley. "We don't appreciate people dumping in our community and we need to tell people it's not okay."

Within an hour of her comments, Public Works Director Fred Stovall was out to take a look at the site himself. 2 NEWS went along with him.

Stovall says sadly, the dumping is a sight he's seen too many times.

He tells us the city has hundreds of illegal dumping locations like this one and it's difficult to keep up with them.

"This is an unfortunate situation where somebody is taking advantage of an isolated [location] to create an illegal dump site," Stovall says.

He tells us his crews will clean up the mess, but to keep the spot clean city officials are counting on some grant money coming through for cameras that would watch the sites and help catch the trash tossers.

"We're talking about ways to curb it to tell people it's not acceptable," Whaley says.

Earlene, who lives just down the street and has to pass the garbage everyday, just wants to see the job done, so she can go back to worrying about her job.

"I hope so," Earlene says.