Paint the Town: Community Cleanup

By ALEX K.W. SCHULTZ, The Porterville Recorder, Calif.

Sep. 10–Effort: About 425 volunteers come out for annual event.

Porterville is a much cleaner community today thanks to a small army of volunteers who took time this weekend to tidy up the town.

After a 17-day countdown in The Recorder, Paint the Town came alive Saturday morning with roughly 425 individuals present at the Porterville Fairgrounds to do their part in a massive cleanup effort of the town.

Companies, clubs, schools and volunteers were split into 24 groups before fanning out to their designated areas to paint over graffiti and pick up trash.

Each collection of people was given four different colors of spray paint, a can of graffiti removal, two gallons of tan paint and 10 trash bags.

Supplies were funded by the Orange Belt Board of Realtors and its member companies, which donated $1,500, and Ennis Homes, which donated $200.

With their equipment in hand, groups set off and didn’t return to the fairgrounds until making Porterville much more physically appealing.

Paint the Town started in September 2003 as a project of Leadership Porterville, with The Recorder serving in a supporting role. The project was so successful — drawing more than 600 participants in its initial outing — that a grass-roots committee came together for future efforts.

The Recorder adopted the program at that point, working in support of the committee leading the graffiti-removal and community clean-up campaign.

Ruben Olguin, in his fourth year as committee organizer for Paint the Town, said the event is a joint effort between The Recorder, community volunteers, the City of Porterville and the Orange Belt Board of Realtors.

“I’ve traveled all over the world and there’s a graffiti problem everywhere, so you have to make a difference right where your community is and right where it starts,” he said. “If you make a difference here, hopefully it will start growing and everybody will be able to see the difference.”

Before the day was over, Olguin said the trash discarded would consume 500 bags that would fill 10 large trash bins.

“We probably saved the city thousands of dollars in cleanup that they don’t have to do,” he said. “I’m guessing that by painting over the graffiti, we’re probably saving the Graffiti Abatement Program thousands of dollars in work they don’t have to take care of. There’s a financial gain for everybody getting involved in this.”

Seventy-five percent of the workers were youth, Olguin said, many of whom were members of different school clubs.

But some were just students who showed up without any prior plans to volunteer for a good cause, including Pablo Flemate, a 16-year-old junior at Porterville High School.

Flemate, whose birthday was Saturday, was giving a gift on the day he should have been receiving — the gift of cleanliness.

“It’s good to help out the community and the environment. Anything to help out Porterville,” he said. “I know a lot of people showed up, but it would probably make more of an impact if everyone came.”

Flemate said if he had a chance, the invaluable advice he would give to Porterville is this: “I would tell everyone to throw their trash away.”

Elizabeth Harrell, Priscilla Pizano and Ceslie Lujan — a trio of eighth graders from Sequoia Middle School’s Advanced Via Individual Determination program — tallied more than 10 hours of combined work.

Each of the youngsters carried essential reasons for rolling out of bed early in the morning to work up a little sweat.

“I wanted to help the community and make the town look cleaner,” Harrell said. “We wanted to make our town look better.”

Lujan echoed her friend’s remarks.

“I wanted to help my neighbor Sheila,” she said. “I helped her come out here early so she could help clean up the tables.”

Pizano summed it all up with two simple sentences.

“We wanted to make changes in Porterville,” she said. “I wanted to help out the community.”

With the majority of volunteers being teenagers and younger, Olguin said the right message was being communicated.

“I think tagging is something that kids see and they think it’s just normal,” he said. “But when you see the damage it does and then you have to come out and paint over it, kids see that people are messing things up. I think it makes a difference to them.”

After the cleanup effort was complete, the event moved into a celebration of sorts complete with a hot dog lunch provided by Leadership Porterville to all of those who participated.

“It’s great,” Olguin said. “It’s really encouraging and important to see that people really want to do this.”

Contact Alex K.W. Schultz at 784-5000, Ext. 1048 or aschultz@portervillerecorder.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Porterville Recorder, Calif.

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