Fontana: a Proud and Beautiful community
Every year millions of people across America participate in the Great American Cleanup™ sponsored by Keep America Beautiful®, running from March 1 through May 31. Many will look at it as another volunteer event and may not even realize that they are participating in the national effort to prevent litter, reduce waste, and beautify communities.
As a member of the Keep California Beautiful Proud Community Program, Fontana takes an active role in on-going beautification programs, clean ups, recycling programs, and graffiti removal projects. In the months ahead, the Public Works department partnered with others to celebrate Arbor Day, will host a community clean up and recycling day, work with volunteers for park clean ups, and continue to remove graffiti tags throughout the city.
Arbor Day Celebration – March 12
This year, Arbor Day was celebrated by students from two local schools.
Officially recognized in Nebraska in 1874, Arbor Day is a day that is set aside to appreciate all of the benefits of trees. They are shade producers, energy savers, beautification enhancements, and seen by many as a crime deterrent. Arbor Day is often celebrated throughout the nation with proclamations, school poster contests, and of course the planting of trees.
As a proud member of Tree City USA®, the City of Fontana shows its Arbor Day spirit with a celebration that usually spans a few days. A proclamation is read by the Mayor at a City Council meeting and followed up a few days later at the Mary Vagle Nature Center with educational activities that focus on the environment and the impact it has on trees and vice versa. The event is usually attended by school children and families. This year the Nature Center staff had nearly 300 school students and local families in attendance. Included in the day’s events were a live animal bio-diversity program, a tree seed planting project, plant badges, and nature journal writing. The Art Depot Gallery also offered interactive art stations introducing Emily Carr’s Trees and Tissue Paper Trees.
To find out more about the annual Arbor Day celebrations please call the Mary Vagle Nature Center at (909) 428-8386 or register for Urban Eco News, the monthly newsletter.
Semi-Annual Community Clean Up and Recycling Day – April 11
Safely dispose of HHW, electronics, and other items at the Semi-Annual Community Clean Up.
The Community Clean Up and Recycling Day offered by the Keep Fontana Beautiful recycling campaign, a division within the Public Works environmental program, is Saturday, April 11. Participants must bring their Burrtec refuse bill.
Residents are encouraged to contact local thrift stores first to see if they will accept donations for reusable items before bringing them to the clean up. The public is advised to plan ahead and group like waste items together such as metal, appliances, TV’s, monitors, tires, and HHW. Drivers will be asked to stop their vehicles at different stations to off-load waste.
The free Semi-Annual event gives residents an opportunity to safely dispose of hazardous and bulky items without sending them to the landfill. Items that will be permitted include refuse, appliances, sofas, mattresses, televisions, computer monitors, green waste, passenger and light truck tires (limit 4), E-waste, and Household Hazardous Waste (HHW). The event is at the West Valley Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) located at 13373 Napa Street, near the Auto Club Speedway, from 8 am to 1 pm.
To find out more, please visit Public Works Environmental or call Scott Bruckner at (909) 350-6760.
Volunteer park cleanups are great ways to get a close look at our urban park system and the effects human behavior has on the environment.
Park Clean Up Days are hosted monthly by the Public Works Department. The events are held from 8 am to 12 pm on Saturdays and are attended by an average of 100 to 200 volunteers per event. During the months of the Great American Cleanup, volunteers will be welcomed at the following locations:
April 11: Seville Park, located at 16601 Seville Avenue
May 9: Jurupa Park, located at 11660 Sierra Avenue
May 23: Santa Fe Park and Metrolink Station, located at 16807 Orange Way
The clean ups are great team builders for businesses or service projects for clubs. To find out more, please call the Public Works Department at (909) 350-6505.
Report graffiti: call (909) 350-GONE or visit the Fontana Police Department at
www.fontanapd.org
In the last quarter of 2008, the quarterly neighborhood meetings hosted by the Police Department offered residents a solemn truth about graffiti crimes – many are difficult to solve.
Thanks to the help of Graffiti Tracker™, a new device used by the Police gang unit, thousands of tags around the city are being captured and catalogued on film by the Public Works graffiti removal crew and then sent to the Police. The new system has allowed the police to triangulate where a tagger lives, record all offenses by the tagger, and in several cases has served as evidence in arrests. An important point for any Keep California Proud Community, and something that is often mentioned at meetings, is the number of tags that are removed each month. In only a few months of using Graffiti Tracker, the Police were able to establish that in excess of 4,000 tags had been removed by the Public Works team. According to Public Works there is an 84% removal rate in 24 hours.
Citizens are encouraged to be proactive in the fight against graffiti. Notify authorities of tagging by calling the Graffiti Hotline at 350-GONE (4663) or report graffiti online.
To find out more about any of the events above, or to participate in helping the community and environment in other ways, please call Public Works at (909) 350-6505. To find out more about Keep America Beautiful, please visit www.kab.org. To find out more about Keep California Beautiful, please visit www.keepcaliforniabeautiful.com.
