Volunteers Say Springside Park Has Gotten Cleaner
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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Volunteers say Springside Park has generally gotten cleaner over the years.
On Tuesday, the Parks Commission approved the Springside Park Conservancy and the Friends of Springside Park's annual cleanups on April 19 and Sept. 20. Longtime members Bernard Mack and Esther Anderson gave a positive report about the park's upkeep.
"The park has been getting cleaner and cleaner every year, which is very exciting to see that people are taking more interest in keeping it that way," Mack said.
"And a lot of other things have been happening at the park, which we're happy about as well, improvements and such."
He reported that 25 years ago, the volunteers used to find parts of cars "and an old Chevy Vega I remember seeing." They are now finding smaller debris such as paper, cans, and bottles.
"We found sheet rock, we found construction debris, and people left their furniture, and people were dumping their chairs. That has completely decreased," he reported.
"Of course, with the COVID situation and the campers that were in there, we found vacant campsites and some camping materials but nothing like construction material or any that kind of stuff that people just using it as their dump."
Anderson added that 10 years ago, they were still taking tires out of the park.
"I remember one of my first cleanups taking a pool, a backyard pool out, and like Bernie said, it's been mostly stuff that goes in a bag since. It's been much, much less," she said.
"And that means that people care about the park and the more people that are there using it for the right reasons, the less people are using it for the wrong reasons."
The groups used to do an annual cleanup but now do it twice a year.
In 2021, Anderson to the commission that the Friends of Springside Park (members of the Springside Park Conservancy) considered temporarily suspending its regular park cleanups after a volunteer was punctured by a hypodermic needle during one of the events.
The needles were encountered at an abandoned encampment within the park during an October cleanup. Since Pittsfield's uptick in homelessness that occurred around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many unhoused individuals have sought shelter in the park.
Parks, Open Space, and Natural Resource Program Manager James McGrath was determined to never have this happen again.
"A couple of years ago, we developed some new policies around organizations doing park cleanups," he reported on Tuesday.
"One of the things that we've specified is that if folks are finding encampments, whether they're large or small if it is a tent encampment, we've asked folks to stay away from it, note it on a map or note it's location, and get that information back to the city."
He said it is important for skilled staff to handle these situations because often, there are hazardous materials or other waste.
"So we say, ‘Stay away from it and note it on a map. We'll take care of it just as soon as we can,' and that's been working out pretty well, I think," McGrath reported.
"Another thing that we've implemented is before we do the sign-off, all the city departments sign off on these special event applications, we need to make certain that the organization has a direct conversation with the health department just to make certain that everyone is on the same page."
In 2023, it was reported that unhoused campers are still prevalent in the park and met with compassionate enforcement. Tents in Pittsfield parks were tagged with a request to evacuate by a certain date aside from the main encampment at Springside Park, which was reportedly treated as a separate matter.
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