NORTH HILLS : Merchants Give City Sweepers the Brush

A small group of North Hills businesses not satisfied with the way the city cleans Sepulveda Boulevard has hired its own sweeper for weekly cleanings on the boulevard and is looking for help in sharing the cost and possibly expanding the service.

“We were not getting cooperation from the city,” said Flip Smith, chairman of the Sepulveda Boulevard Business Watch program. “They’re undermanned and under budget.”

For about a year, the Business Watch members have had their employees sweep and clean by hand the street in front of their businesses or on the same block. But that takes employees away from their regular duties and causes other problems.

“It’s too big a hazard to have people out there sweeping during the day,” said Carl Salvati, owner of the Oddball Cabaret, who a month ago--with neighboring Mike’s Custom Autobody--hired a firm from Sylmar to clean Sepulveda Boulevard between Roscoe Boulevard and Parthenia Street.

The businesses are neighbors on the street between Chase and Parthenia. Daco Shells, a nearby camper shell business, soon chipped in to help pay for the effort.

Now, instead of having employees sweeping the streets four to six hours a week, “we can be making money,” said Bob Jewell, manager at Mike’s Custom Autobody.

A spokesman with the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Maintenance said that although he does not know exactly how often that section of Sepulveda Boulevard is swept, city workers clean some roads only every four or five weeks.

“Even when they do sweep it, they do it during the day,” said Jewell, adding that, typically, parked cars block daytime sweepers from getting into the gutters and cleaning out the garbage there.

The sweeper hired by the businesses now also runs once a week, usually at 3 or 4 a.m.

Salvati and Jewell said they are hoping to get more businesses interested in helping to pay for the sweeper. If more participate, that could bring down the cost per business for the service, and if the program works well it might be expanded elsewhere on Sepulveda Boulevard, the business owners said.