CARLTON FLETCHER: Trashing your neighborhood? That’ll cost you 10 bucks

“What about this … land, How much more abuse from man can she stand?”

— Marvin Gaye

Albany-Dougherty Code Enforcement Chief Robert Carter and I played phone tag all day Friday, and because we didn’t connect, I will advise up front that I was unable to definitively confirm the following, either by talking with Carter or through other means.

But I got it from pretty unimpeachable sources, and this is an opinion column. So I am going to opine on this matter even without 100 percent assurance that it is accurate. If it turns out not to be, I’ll follow up.

This is the story I was told: A vehicle bearing the logo of a local business (and because of that little hint of uncertainty, I won’t mention the business … only say it’s a business whose employees should have known better) is driving down a busy highway. Trash is blowing out of the vehicle and draws the attention of a Code Enforcement officer. The officer stops the driver and tickets him.

The driver goes to Municipal Court and is found guilty of his transgression. (Here’s the good — or in this case, not so good — part.) The driver is fined … ta da! $10.

That’s right, $10. … I’ll let that sink in.

OK, now consider this. Albany and Dougherty County — as well as most of this region — look in many places like the garbage dump of the world. Trash strewn on highways, roads, in business parking lots — pretty much everywhere people take a notion to get rid of personal, household or any other kind of trash — is not an anomaly. It is the norm.

The city’s mayor, the county’s commission chairman, city and county commissioners, local law enforcement and all sorts of concerned citizens have been fighting the litter issue with little to no success for decades. It seems the “Dispose of Trash Properly” concept is lost on most of the population of this region. Soiled diapers tossed out of cars, trash blowing out of the backs of pickups, fast-food wrappers marking paths from such restaurants to people’s homes are common sights here.

And this guy with trash blowing out of his truck is levied a mind-boggling $10 fine. Way to go, your honor. That’ll teach him.

Albany City Commissioner/businesswoman B.J. Fletcher refused to ignore the fact that someone had, essentially, dumped the contents of her car in Fletcher’s restaurant parking lot a few months back. Fletcher looked into the debris, found an address, managed to get some security footage and pressed charges. She pursued the case — would not let it go — and the culprit ended up paying the city max of $1,000 in fines and was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service.

A similar, high-profile case a few months before that one occurred when a concerned citizen, Leigh Brooks, videoed a waste truck strowing trash on a busy street and turned the video over to Keep Albany-Dougherty Beautiful Director Judy Bowles. When the case was called while Brooks was vacationing in North Carolina, she cut her vacation short to come back to court and testify. That litterer was fined $350.

In what is looking more and more like a futile attempt to stop litter, Fletcher and her fellow city commissioners voted to increase fines for littering to the $1,000 state limit, and when informed of the recent court ruling (pending verification), her disappointment was apparent.

“If (the $10 fine) is what happened, then I feel like that is a slap in the face,” Fletcher said. “A $10 fine does not even cover the work that Code Enforcement put into bringing the case. It’s hard for me to comprehend how, in a community where litter is a big problem, we have this kind of ruling against someone who was obviously littering. This sends the wrong kind of message to the citizens of this community.”

Asked about the meager fine, Bowles said she had not been given details about the supposed incident, so she elected not to comment specifically about the matter. But she did offer: “If that turns out to be a fact, that is very disappointing.”

Disappointing indeed. Litter is a plague in this city, and — as Fletcher and Dougherty County Commissioner Anthony Jones have pointed out — “One of the only ways to get the attention of people who litter is to hit them in the pocketbook.”

Ten dollars is a good chunk of money for some of us when we’re in a tight spot. But a $10 fine for flouting a law intended to stop such action renders that law toothless. And it sends a clear message where priorities lie in this community.

Staff Photo