Residents Give La Colonia a Clean Sweep

La Colonia has fewer rusty bicycles, abandoned cars and mildewed mattresses than it had a couple days ago, thanks to a group of Oxnard residents and county inmates who cleaned the neighborhood’s vacant lots, streets and alleys Friday.

A key part of Oxnard’s revitalization effort continues today, with Boy Scouts and neighbors pitching in to pick up trash in one of Ventura County’s poorest neighborhoods.

Morey Navarro, who grew up in La Colonia, helped organize the cleanup and donated one of his towing service trucks for the effort.

With most of the large items, including a few abandoned cars, picked up Friday, Navarro plans to lead another sweep through La Colonia today to rid the neighborhood’s streets of litter.

Manuel Gonzalez was pleased to see a tow truck picking up large items Friday from an alley near his house. He said his neighbors litter the alley off 3rd Street with all sorts of trash--clothes, mattresses, even dead pets--so they don’t have to pay the city for collecting it.

“They come out and just leave it,” he said. “They should realize it’s bad for their health.”

Gonzalez said he expects the alley to be littered again by mid-week.

But on Friday, La Colonia looked pretty good.

Lifelong La Colonia resident Jesse Ontiveros had piled his small pickup high with shredded tires, old bicycles, tossed work boots and a broken car stereo--just a few of the items he collected on a spin around the neighborhood.

“You name it, you got it in there,” said Ontiveros, who saved a car engine in an alley for a second trip.

A dozen inmates in the county’s work-release program spent several hours Friday sweeping up broken glass and gravel from a lot where children often play. For the inmates, the cleanup was a way to work off sentences without going to jail.

Inmate Mariann Gerritsen said she would prefer not to be a part of the Department of Corrections efforts but would probably be doing the same thing--pulling weeds--in her garden at home.

“I just basically am here . . . [to] do my job and never, ever come back,” she said.

Even so, Gerritsen said, her time was more productive than sitting in a jail cell.

“At least it’s cleaning up the community, doing something,” she said.

Oxnard Police Officer Bob Camarillo, who is assigned to the department’s La Colonia storefront, said residents who throw trash into the neighborhood’s streets only encourage the dumping of more trash. It’s a phenomenon he called the “broken-window syndrome.”

But Colonia’s residents are not the type to let their neighborhood become overrun by litter, Camarillo said. “There’s an extremely high amount of neighborhood pride--a lot of involvement,” he said.

Navarro said those who volunteered Friday and today would be happy to help Oxnard’s other neighborhoods.

“Any neighborhood council that asks, we’re going to come out and help,” Navarro said. “If it works in this area, maybe it will work somewhere else.”