Mayor Nutter Leads Citywide Clean-Up Saturday

Mayor Nutter Leads Citywide Clean-Up Saturday

Thousands of residents took to the streets Saturday for a citywide bout of spring cleaning, helping Mayor Michael Nutter make good on a campaign pledge to get rid of the "filthy mess" that had blemished the city. Goodbye, Filth-adelphia.

"People are tremendously enthusiastic about this effort," Nutter said after raking leaves at a community center near his home in the Wynnefield section. "It builds a sense of community."

Nutter estimated about 12,000 volunteers were participating in the Philly Spring Cleanup, which aimed to spruce up some 5,000 blocks and collect 1 million pounds of trash (see related story).

Participants were invited to a barbecue afterward at Lincoln Financial Field, the city's professional football stadium.

The usually dapper mayor sported a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers for his chores in Wynnefield, which included raking leaves and tossing numerous trash bags into a garbage truck.

Nutter had said during his mayoral campaign that he was annoyed by how dirty the city was, calling it a "filthy mess." But he said Saturday that residents seemed eager to do something about it.

"People have been wanting to do these kinds of things -- I sensed it," Nutter said. "I felt it, I heard it, I saw it."

Peter Rescorl, president of the Wynnefield Residents Association, said about three dozen volunteers tidied up a World War I memorial park in the neighborhood before Nutter's arrival. They also cleaned one of the area's main streets and a community courtyard behind the library.

Rescorl expects this to be the first of an ongoing cleanup effort by Nutter.

"We have every confidence that he will maintain this and keep it going," Rescorl said.
Earlier in the day, Nutter helped landscape the southwest part of the city, where about 80 trees were planted along streets and in playgrounds.

Last year, before Nutter took office, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin disparaged Philadelphia for being dirty. Nagin had come to the city to learn about its efforts to demolish blighted buildings and replace them with new developments.

"You ought to go to Philly and you will appreciate how clean New Orleans is," Nagin told a hometown crowd after the visit. "We still have some work to do but we definitely beat them by a long shot."

Nagin later apologized. When asked what Nagin would say about Philadelphia today, Nutter smiled and said the New Orleans mayor would call it "a wonderfully clean place."