San Francisco street cleaning crews to get boost to their budget
SAN FRANCISCO -- In the wake of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis featuring San Francisco in a new campaign ad, all eyes are on the city's efforts to clean up some of its most troubled areas.
A host of street cleaners with the Department of Public Works show up each day, cleaning thousands of pounds of trash from across San Francisco that is often carelessly and illegally dumped. Their team could see an increased investment through Mayor London Breed's recent budget proposal.
"It's a clean city, but it has a lot of trash," street cleaner John Duport told CBS San Francisco. He has a unique view about the city's cleanliness that not everyone shares.
"If we stopped working for a couple of days the city would come to a standstill, trash would just fill the streets," Duport told CBS News Bay Area.
On top of his role as a street cleaner, Duport considers himself an ambassador for the city, having cleaned every neighborhood throughout his eight years with the Department of Public Works.
There's one unsurprising item that he consistently sees everywhere from the Tenderloin to the Sunset District.
"I find needles everywhere in the city," Duport explained. "That's the one consistent thing; needles are everywhere."
It's a labor of love for Duport, who was born and raised in the city by the Bay. Each day, he patrols city streets leaving them better than how he found them.
He says he's equipped with everything he needs, but more personnel is the one thing that could make a big dent in cleaning up San Francisco.
"No matter how much trash I pick up, I'm never going to get it all in one day. And that's for every person who does what I do," Duport said. "There's just not enough hands and trucks to get all the trash."
The budget committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Wednesday approved a $16.7 million budget increase to the street cleaning division of the Department of Public Works. The increase comes by way of savings from capital projects, deferred acquisition of trucks, salary savings from job vacancies and unused funds, according to a DPW official.
Duport collects roughly 2,000 pounds of trash each shift. On Wednesday, he couldn't make it one block in the Richmond District without seeing a new pile sitting on a curb.
"Today, it's just a couple items. Tomorrow, there could be a pile that fills up my whole truck," Duport said. "It seems like people think it's okay to just dump their trash by trash cans on all corners and we're just here to pick it up for them."
Relief could be on the horizon. The full budget is up for approval by the board on August 1.