Heard it Here

Jennifer Davis walked down Fourth Street, pushing a trashcan and stopping to pick up cigarette butts along the way.

“People definitely notice. They are pleasant on the street when we come by and clean up,” Davis said.

Davis, an employee of the Greensboro-based facility services company, The Budd Group, is a member of the new Clean Team Ambassador Program in downtown Winston-Salem.

Just under a month ago, the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, working with The Budd Group, launched the Clean Team in the Business Improvement District, the first of its kind in Winston-Salem.

The district was created by the Winston-Salem City Council in November of last year. The Council created a $.09 tax for every $100 of property owned downtown to pay for the growth of programs like the Clean Team.

“The program is not that radical of an idea,” president of the partnership, Jason Thiel, said. “It’s hard to find a large city that doesn’t already have something like this.”

The Clean Team is responsible for a large scope of primarily janitorial work downtown, including picking up cigarette butts and other trash along the sidewalks, power-washing sidewalks, removing graffiti and replacing trashcan liners.

The ambassadors also act as additional sets of eyes and ears downtown.

Jeff MacIntosh, City Council representative of the Northwest Ward, knows that the ambassadors are a visible presence downtown.

“People are stopping and talking to them, which is exactly what we want happening,” he said.

The new tax, started in July of this year, will generate $468,000 annually, $260,000 of which will go to the Clean Team every year.

“The tax is something people, for the most part, broadly support,” Thiel said. “It is important to put into context how much the tax really is. If you own $100,000 of property downtown, you pay $90 a year.”

“People want to make sure that we are being good stewards of the funds,” he said. “By and large, once people see the Clean Team doing the work, they are generally very pleased about what is going on.”

Camino Bakery on Fourth Street, with an outdoor seating area and large windows overlooking the street, has a vested interest in having clean sidewalks downtown.

“They’ve done a really good job…cleaning around the trashcans and along the sidewalks that usually aren’t cleaned,” Jack Duffus, a manager at Camino Bakery, said.

Duffus says Camino is a proponent of the new district property tax. “Once we saw how the money was being spent, we were in support of it.”

The partnership came up with the idea of a clean team back in 2011 when pedestrian traffic downtown began to increase. As downtown transformed into a place where people wanted to spend their time, the partnership knew the importance of maintaining a welcoming environment.

“The [district] was something we had to spend time with and build support for,” Thiel said. After the Council held several open council meetings last November, most everyone who would feel the effects of the tax supported the creation of the district. “Today, the district is very strongly supported,” he said.

The Nissen Building Apartments are located in the center of downtown on Fourth Street.

Rodney Davis, concierge manager of the building, has lived in Winston-Salem for eight years and has never seen anything like this program before.

“This is the first step I’ve seen toward making downtown cleaner,” Davis said. “It’s the extra step [we needed] to make sure downtown looks good.”

The Clean Team are also there to provide a safer downtown environment. Both Thiel and Sergeant K. Bowers of the Bike Patrol adhere to the idea that “clean is safe.”

“They are a visible presence,” Bowers said. “We’ve seen a vast improvement since the Clean Team started coming in.”

Leaders downtown like Thiel and MacIntosh say they hope people recognize the impact programs like the Clean Team will have in the long run.

“I think we are poised to see major, major improvements in the development over the next five to ten years,” MacIntosh said. “The Clean Team being in place facilitates that.”

The Clean team covers the entire Business Improvement District, which stretches north to Martin Luther King Drive, south of Business 40, west to Spring Street and east to Church Street. They are clearly recognizable in their bright orange shirts.