If you zoom into the city of Paterson’s downtown district, you’ll find Diego Gomez’s bakery. He opened it four months ago, but there’s one problem. Every day at 4 o’clock in the morning he arrives and has to pick up all the trash sitting outside his door.
“They throw the garbage. They don’t care about other businesses, but I have to clean it,” he said.
The Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh says that’s about to change.
“We have planters that have been turned into trash receptacles. So now planters will actually have flowers in them to make the area more aesthetically appealing,” he said.
He announced a company called Commercial District Services was hired to manage the downtown area.
“That’s going to include a 7 day a week cleaning service — manual street sweeping, sidewalks, curb lines, graffiti removal, maintaining the district planters and district amenities,” said Chris Bernardo, president of Commercial District Services.
Since last year, homicide rates are down roughly 47 percent in Paterson. The mayor of the third most populated city in the Garden State says this $200,000 investment is another effort to make the downtown not only cleaner, but safer.
“More business friendly, more customer friendly,” Sayegh said.
Commercial District Services operates in about 20 business improvement districts in New Jersey — from Jersey City to Newark and Elizabeth. Bernardo says it makes a difference when people know somebody is watching.
“When they see us out in the district cleaning up, tending to the district, showing care for the district, stakeholders tend to treat things like garbage removal differently. They tend to remove graffiti off their property quicker when it gets placed on the property,” said Bernardo.
At a news conference the new deputy mayor of commerce was sworn in. He will serve as a bridge between the administration and the business community.
“We’re bringing in people who have the credentials and are willing to lend their time and talent for free,” Sayegh said.
The program is set to begin at the beginning of January.