The most popular folks at City Hall usually aren’t the code compliance workers.
But the code employees in Independence threw a party Saturday, and many residents of the Kentucky Hills neighborhood showed up.
They brought an estimated 50 to 80 tons of trash and brush, filling 11 40-yard trash bins in Mill Creek Park in northwestern Independence.
It was the biggest cleanup ever scheduled by the Independence code compliance department. Most cleanups have targeted neighborhoods of perhaps 350 properties.
Saturday’s event included almost 600 properties. Accordingly, the park’s parking lot was filled with trucks and trailers, all laden with old mattresses, sofas, barbecue grills, pieces of exercise equipment and tons of other things no longer wanted.
These were the items that code employees probably would see on somebody’s front porch in two years, said Andrew Warlen, Independence’s code compliance manager.
“But this is a more proactive way to deal with it,” he added.
Plenty of municipalities help residents with occasional cleanups. So what’s the big deal in Independence?
Code employees think it’s the way they get up close and personal with residents about their properties. Code compliance, often a sensitive issue in suburban municipalities, for years operated in Independence through a reactive process that included anonymous complaints lodged by residents.
It was an inefficient process that sometimes generated resentment, said Robert Heacock, Independence’s city manager.
“Sometimes, after the tree keeps falling on you, you have to figure out a new way to chop down the tree,” he said.
Heacock, working with health department employees, worked out a new approach. Since 2005, through mailings, a neighborhood meeting and individual property inspections, the Independence code employees have asked residents to buy into the cleanup of individual neighborhoods.
This, many say, has proved a lot more neighborly.
Going into Saturday’s cleanup, the Independence program had removed about 2.2 million pounds of trash and brush from 31 neighborhoods.
The program, meanwhile, has resulted in honors for the program from the Missouri Municipal League, the National Association of County & City Health Officials and the American Association of Code Enforcement.
Many volunteers on Saturday hauled in junk for residents who had no way to get it there. And then there were residents who were helping friends.
One trailer in the line carried a load of old wooden fencing and landscape timbers. Mike Carpenter, an Independence resident, said he’d had no way of getting rid of it.
“Some people don’t have trucks,” he said.
Then he called friend Rick Anderson, who on Saturday was the guy with the truck.
“He owes me big time,” Anderson said of Carpenter. “I’m thinking a steak and lobster dinner.”
To reach Brian Burnes, call 816-234-4120 or send e-mail to bburnes@kcstar.com.
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