City of Kingman Streets Department crews work their way through the alleyways and side streets of downtown setting up road cones and detour signs in the afternoon before First Friday festivities kick off. Photo by Aaron Ricca
KINGMAN – An event that requires Beale Street to be closed off requires a mix of unseen logistics that keep the streets and sidewalks clean.
The Andy Devine Days Parade, Veterans Day Parade and this month, First Friday, attract hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators, shoppers, diners and vendors.
The June 7 christening of the newly renovated Beale Street between Second and Sixth Street attracted just that amount of people from throughout the community.
However, there are some thankless, if not unseen, tasks that go into prepping the sanitation and safety aspects of such a spectacle.
Before the vendors roll in and the community enjoys a night of excitement, City of Kingman Solid Waste and Streets Departments, along with a portable toilet contractor, roll in and prep the block for sanitation and safety.
The City of Kingman Solid Waste Department was out at 7 a.m. Friday dropping off 36 mobile, residential 90-gallon trash cans to compliment the permanent fixture 22 brown plastic 36-gallon cans and eight new 40-gallon metal cans that were added as part of the Kingman Downtown Streetscape Project.City of Kingman Solid Waste Department Maintenance Operations Supervisor Glenn Proudfoot and Sanitation Operator Deanna Honeycutt, background, place one of 36 90-gallon trash cans along Beale Street for First Friday festivities. Photo by Aaron Ricca
That’s a total of, oddly enough, 66 trash receptacles.
During the same period, one street sweeper from the street department was spit-shining Beale and adjoining streets. Around noon, street department crews began placing signs and barricades blocking off Beale Street for First Friday festivities.
Slightly over 20 city workers and their temp agency helpers had the task of setting up and taking down trash cans, street signs and barricades to make three blocks of downtown function for fun for a few hours.
The Solid Waste Department took care of the trash and litter needs. There were three solid waste personnel Friday morning to set up the green receptacles and two to empty and retrieve them Saturday morning. There’s always more work behind the scenes.
“That doesn’t include pre-planning like where to put the cans, closing of the streets and signage that needs to be out,” said Ed Tapia, Solid Waste Superintendent. “We work closely with Kingman Area Chamber of Commerce, Kingman Downtown Merchants Association and city staff.”
It takes one hour to load the trash cans at the public works yard, two hours for placement, around two hours to dump the following day and another hour to remove the cans and take back to the public works yard.
At 6:30 a.m. Saturday, a two-man crew – one driving a trash truck and the other a flatbed truck for the 36 90-gallon plastic cans – were just about done emptying all the trash receptacles on Beale Street. They had started at 4 a.m. and by 7 a.m. all 66 receptacles were emptied.
That’s a lot of trash, but since the truck wouldn’t head to the landfill until later in the day, or even Monday, a solid number on the tonnage of the garbage wasn’t available and the truck itself didn’t have an onboard scale.
“There’s no way to weigh exactly how much trash we picked up,” said Solid Waste Department driver Tim Cowin
The Streets Department had the task of blocking off the street to set up traffic control for First Friday.
That team consisted of 16 street department personnel which included signal and sign technicians as well as temporary labor services, started at 5 a.m., did their regular duties and then started the road closures and traffic control for First Friday at 11 a.m. and got done at about 3 p.m. There were three shifts that lasted through the night.
John Weable, Street Maintenance Lead, was the man running the show, literally almost running, with convoy of a supervisor truck, sign truck and two shadow trucks (the ones with the giant blinking arrow lights) setting up 140 road cones, ‘Special Event Ahead’, ‘road closed’, ‘detour’ and ‘no turn’ signs would take two hours each, respectively, as the crews zig-zagged through Oak Street and alleyways parallel to Beale Street.
“The shadow trucks are there to make sure traffic doesn’t bust through the barriers and provide a safety buffer between traffic and the workers,” Weable said.
Weable was also the liaison between the street crew and traffic. He had the task of both supervising and dealing with confused motorists, which can be mildly annoying, but Weable knows the job.
“I try not to get frustrated,” he said. “I take it easy and try to be helpful and professional.”
The street crew had to have signs set up by 1:30 p.m. so the games, tables, vendor tents and food trucks could move in and set up shop. The street crew also had to stop by each business and let them know there would be a hard close off the street at 2 p.m.
“We did that so that the Kingman Police Department doesn’t have to come down and enforce it,” Weable said. “We keep everybody happy that way. Try to keep it positive thing.”
There was a small stand-by crew to run the City of Kingman Street Department Locomotive and then an 8-man night crew coming through about 9:30 p.m. for takedown, which would take two to three hours.
“The crew did an excellent job today getting everything ready, especially in the heat,” Weable said.
In between the trash and the traffic was the toilets. When people gotta go, they gotta go.
Two portable toilet and handwashing stations were set up at Second and Fourth Streets. Each station included one regular toilet, one handicapped toilet and one handwashing station at each site. Those sanitation logistics were set up through the combination of The Kingman Area Chamber of Commerce, Kingman Downtown Merchants Association, Kingman Main Street and the City of Kingman.
The portable toilet units were set up Thursday afternoon by HQ Portables out of Golden Valley. The company sent one truck with two crew members. Setting up the stations takes roughly 15 minutes to drop off and fill the toilets with biocide chemical refresher which both kills bacteria and softens the nasty smell. Pick up takes about 20 minutes because they have to suck out the waste, clean the units and put them back on the truck. HQ Portables picked the units up Saturday afternoon, probably still being used by late night or early morning patrons.
“We don’t want to leave them to interfere with the businesses,” said Charlenne Newton, HQ Portables office manager.
By Saturday night, downtown was back to business as usual.
Aaron Ricca
