Josef Pansoy and Rand Stamm discuss procedures to be used with the recently purchased street sweeper.
Every Saturday morning, the University’s Lot 16 is a reflection of the previous Friday night — sloppy. Located at East 14th Avenue and Kincaid Street, the parking lot is constantly begrimed in broken glass bottles, Styrofoam beer cups and litter, creating quite a chore for the Facilities Services staff members assigned to clean it by hand.
But after searching for more than a year, Department of Public Safety Parking and Transportation manager Rand Stamm has found the solution in the form of a fast, effective and expensive sweeper that handles the task more thoroughly than ever before.
“We will focus on the worst lots as necessary,” he said in reference to Lot 16 and other such locations, “but the entire purpose is to make all our paved parking lots cleaner and neater.”
The Applied Sweeper 424HS — better known as “The Green Machine” — was recently purchased by DPS to deal with the constant problem of litter in campus parking lots. When needed, the green ride-on-or-walk-behind sweeper is operated by an existing staff member of the Parking and Transportation division.
The self-supported DPS division paid $28,000 for the sweeper using self-earned funds from its Equipment Reserve Fund, Stamm said. Prior to the purchase, DPS contracted out the service of cleaning lots, which cost several thousand dollars each time. The costly service could only be offered once a term at best, which wasn’t enough considering trash volume.
“Complaints would come in every week,” Stamm said, “and we couldn’t keep up with it by hand.”
Stamm began to gather information about small sweepers, asked for a Green Machine demonstration and eventually put it out to bid.
The quiet, 68.1 decibel,
pedestrian friendly sweeper comes complete with a recycling chamber as well as flashing warning lights and an audible voice recording to warn people of its approach. Swept trash is gathered with two rotating front brushes, pulled through a tough alloy impeller fan and compacted to a size and consistency similar to rock salt.
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