by Travis Mateer

Every once in awhile, when I read stories like this, I feel compelled to remind readers of my homeless camp cleanup bonafides because it wasn’t that long ago that I successfully collaborated with the Health Department, Clark Fork Coalition, and other groups, like an ATV group, to remove TONS of trash twice a years from the Reserve street area.

Now, five years after my absence from coordinating the Homeless Outreach Teams, we get a supposedly clueless communications person for the County pretending (because I don’t think she’s this clueless) like she doesn’t know why volunteer efforts at Reserve Street have been so limited in what they can accomplish, and who is willing to help out.

Here is County spokeswoman Alison Franz giving her uninformed opinion about why volunteers like me were inappropriately relying on non-standard assistance from the Sheriff’s Department when we really should have been doing it all ourselves back in April:

In April, we took you to a volunteer cleanup effort. On that day, the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office hauled off the trash. County spokeswoman Allison Franz tells us that’s not standard. She thinks the volunteers who clean up the trash are also responsible for hauling it out, but there’s still a level of uncertainty.

I know Alison Franz is busy redacting all those emails a curious citizen paid over $800 dollars to obtain, but I’d really appreciate it if she allocated some of her limited resources to curing herself of her professed ignorance on this matter. Maybe then us pesky volunteers can get back to cleaning up some homeless trash.