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Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s office is pushing back against claims made by Keep Tiger Town Beautiful earlier this week that the administration hasn’t been receptive to the organization’s requests for assistance.
Those claims were part of an article published by Daily Report on Monday highlighting Elite Waste & Construction Services’ donation of seven street sweepers to the group of self-proclaimed “litter warriors.” In that article, Keep Tiger Town Beautiful founder Jennifer Richardson said she reached out to Elite for assistance only after multiple attempts to get the city-parish’s help did not bear fruit.
In an 1,100-word email sent to Daily Report on Tuesday, the mayor’s office thanked Keep Tiger Town Beautiful for its “tremendous” work but said it was concerned about Richardson’s comments implying that the city-parish hasn’t collaborated with the organization.
According to the mayor’s office, the Department of Maintenance collected and disposed of 14,000 bags of litter placed on the side of the road by Keep Tiger Town Beautiful in 2022 and 2023, and so far this year, 1,302 bags of litter, 41 tires and seven shopping carts have been collected and disposed of by the city-parish.
Richardson doesn’t dispute those figures—in fact, she’s “eternally grateful” for the help she’s gotten from the city-parish when it comes to trash collection and disposal. The issue, she says, pertains only to street sweeping.
“Every time we’ve asked for a street sweeper, they’ve always had an excuse,” Richardson says. “They always say they’re broken, or they’re in the shop. They’ve never told us ‘yes’ when we’ve asked for a street sweeper. Never.”
The mayor’s office writes that the Department of Environmental Services was “not aware” that Keep Tiger Town Beautiful was seeking a street sweeping partnership but that it is now in the process of connecting the department with the organization to discuss a collaboration.
“The bottom line is that the city-parish has a long-standing partnership with Keep Tiger Town Beautiful,” the mayor’s office writes. “As directed by [Mayor Broome], the city-parish has made significant investments to support KTTB’s regular litter cleanups, and we will continue to engage with KTTB regarding other requests.”
The mayor’s office also notes that the city-parish entered into a “massive” street sweeping contract with Elite in January and that “5,000 miles of city-parish streets have been swept in 2024.” But Richardson says she’s been requesting street sweepers for nearly four years, well before the city-parish’s contract with Elite was inked.
“Over the years, we’ve only seen street sweepers after parades or in affluent neighborhoods,” Richardson says. “Every day, we go to a different intersection, and the intersections that we go to have not been swept—unless we did it ourselves with snow shovels.”
