Updated June 10, 2022
A total of six ashtrays are now installed around the Heritage Hills Park parking lots. The last two were installed on the west side of the main parking area on June 8. Jonathan Bertanelli, who installed the ashtrays, wrote in an email after finishing the project:
“Please be advised that I have installed the last two cigarette butt stands on the 3rd island at the park just a few minutes ago. They are both in. One is fully painted red. The other one is three quarters painted red because I ran out of red paint. When I come in from the airport this afternoon I will pick up another can, finish it, and put the ashtray labels on it as well.”
Bertanelli continues: “The next project at Heritage Hills Park will start soon and that will be the purchase of the steel containers for the trash on Islands two and three in the park. When they are shipped to me I will install them and then also purchase the aluminum trash cans to go inside as well. Lots of projects still in store for Heritage Park.
This is your Good Samaritan update for today. Standby for further updates. Have a great day.”
First published June 6, 2022
Paul Jessen doesn’t get paid to pick up the discarded liquor bottles and other garbage scattered throughout the Heritage Hills and Cherry Hills neighborhoods, but he does it anyway. Jessen, a Heritage East Association of Residents board member, said he can only hope the offenders will notice his efforts and maybe one of them will think twice about throwing their trash on the ground.
“I am not sure how to change the habits of people who continue to discard their trash, whether booze bottles & cans, cigarette butts, used diapers, banana peels, plastic bottles, used intravenous needles, fast food remnants, et. al, on Ventura between Paseo Del Norte & Academy. It is the same people either driving through or it could be our neighbors?” Jessen wrote via NextDoor. “I am just letting the community know what is being littered and how much is being nonchalantly scattered in our roads. Maybe one or two drunk drivers, one or two casual litterers will notice someone picking up their trash or see it on Next Door and decide to ‘Toss No Mas!’”
Jessen has already changed one park-goers behavior for the good. While completing his litter walk at Heritage Hills Park on March 22, Jessen met a man named Jonathon Bertanelli who regularly visits the park to fill out paperwork in his car. “I struck up a conversation with him about the amount of cigarette butts I pick up around the median,” Jessen explained. “He confessed that he was a smoker and did drop his cig butts on the ground.”
Bertanelli provided his side of the story in an email response to questions. He said Jessen walks about three miles a day picking up trash around the park and surrounding neighborhoods. “He then picked up my cigarette butts that I dropped on the ground,” Bertanelli explained. “I said ‘oh no, no. I put them there and let me please pick them up’.”
After talking with Jessen, Bertanelli decided to do something to help keep the park clean. “Then I felt “guilty” for dropping my cigarette butts on the ground and having somebody else pick them up,” he said. “So I told Jessen that I was going to get a couple cans and put them on the ground so people could put their cigarette butts in them because there was big piles of cigarette butts all around the area.”
“He decided on his own to install two conduit pipes and place two ceramic pots on the top for cigarette butt cans,” Jessen said of Bertanelli. “He also cemented the conduit into the ground. He purchased the cement and did the work on his own.”
Jessen later donated a trash receptacle holder he cleaned up to be used at the park. “I delivered it to the park after getting permission from Parks & Rec,” Jessen said. “Jonathan took it upon himself to purchase cement & rebar and he secured it to the median. It has helped with the increased trash accumulation.”
Bertanelli agrees that the new receptacle helps reduce the amount of trash on the ground. He revealed that Jessen also purchased a bag of concrete to help install the trash container. “Jessen left the container there for me and when I returned from Arizona I came up to the park and cemented that container into the ground,” Bertanelli said. “The park maintenance crew regularly empties the trash in the container. This has virtually stopped all of the trash being thrown on the ground around the first island.”
Sometime in mid-May the cigarette butt containers and conduit pipe were destroyed by vandals. “Jonathan discovered it when he came back to the park on May 21, 2022. He has since replaced the cigarette butt stands at his own expense,” Jessen said. “He has talked to an APD officer, who brings his canine to the park, about the vandalism. The officer was to report it to the Commander of the NEAC.”
“I was not pleased at all to find out that the two orange clay flower pots that I put in for the ashtrays were vandalized and literally smashed to pieces,” Bertanelli said. “I’m one of the nicest individuals that you can meet, and I will do anything in the world I can for anyone, but I am not tolerant of this kind of activity under any circumstances.”
Jessen said he would nominate Bertanelli for an award if the city has one for the type of community service he provides. “He appreciates the way the park is maintained and has made his contribution to keep it that way,” Jessen said. “I hope his generosity will be allowed to remain and maybe acknowledged.”
Bertanelli, who plans on moving to the Heritage East neighborhood in the future, had kind words for Jessen as well. “If you do not know Jessen, he is a wonderful individual and I value our new friendship and his dedicated service to the environment and keeping the Heritage East and Cherry Hills neighborhoods clean and free from vandalism.”