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City discourages residents from picking up trash
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Letter writer Robert J. Wetmore submitted these photos with his letter. - photo by Photo provided.

Editor,

For a lot has been said that the military who live downtown don’t clean up around their property, especially those living on Sharon Street. Maybe you civilians who work for OMI dry-trash pickup have demotivated them by not picking up the dry trash (such as leaves, tree branches and grass clippings). For when OMI doesn’t pick up the dry trash for a month, it just blows back in their yards and their neighbors’ yards. Why clean up my yard when OMI doesn’t care enough to pick up our dry trash?

And OMI has been telling people to burn their dry trash. And this is how wildfires get started. Maybe the city of Hinesville wants to end up like the city that burned down in Canada or the towns in California. For it would be much safer for OMI to do their jobs and motivate the people they are supposed to provide dry-trash pickup to clean their areas. Case in point, see the enclosed picture, for this pile has been sitting here over one month. (Editor’s note: The photos are posted to the left.) These are dry leaves that the mobile-home occupants stacked up using boxes, wheelbarrows and shopping carts. And OMI has big trucks to haul off these big piles. Maybe the city needs to sell these big trucks if they aren’t going to use them, and fire all the employees who are not doing their job of picking up dry trash. For this would save the city of Hinesville a lot of money, and the mayor would not need a SPLOST.

For not picking up the dry trash on Joyner Road has the same effect as the Sharon Street problem. For they demotivate the people who live in this mobile-home park. And even the landlord has stopped raking up leaves, or just leaves them in small piles, and then they blow all over the park. And a lot of leaves on the edge of a forested area, which has never had a controlled burn to clean out the dead brush and leaves, is very dangerous. For a wildfire in the forest could spread inside this mobile-home park by way of dry trash. For all it would take to complete the fire triangle is an igniter, which could come from a motor-vehicle exhaust system or kids playing with a lighter/matches — even a broken bottle bottom could act as a magnifier. I got my learning of fire science from the U.S. Army engineer school at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and I have a diploma in forestry management from a school in California.

For I have also put in a fire-break path, and our trailer and Lot 29A are equipped with water outlets and 400 feet of hose. I also try to keep the area that is next to the forest free of dry trash. Too bad the city of Hinesville’s OMI can’t do their job. For it’s not my job to make on-the-spot corrections, but I do because I am ex-military and a Vietnam veteran. For the saying “it’s not my job” comes from the civilian world. For maybe OMI needs to hire ex-military people to get the dry trash picked up and supervise the civilians who never spend three years or longer in the military who say, “It’s not my job.” For the civilians would be trained to make on-the-spot corrections or else be terminated from working for the city.

I hope this letter will wake up OMI and the city of Hinesville.

Yours truly,
Robert J. Wetmore
Hinesville

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