When most people think about taking out the garbage for the night or tidying up their homes, a smile isn’t usually on their face. That’s not the case for the Clean Team, a group of individuals who work for the Downtown State College Improvement District. The chipper group truly enjoys their work, and it shows.
“Most people on the surface probably think this job is not that glamorous or maybe you don’t feel appreciated,” Lee Anne Jeffries, DSCID executive director, said. “But these guys just have a ball.
“They’re proud of what they do and when talking with people on the streets these guys will tell you they have great interactions with people.”
The Clean Team has been around since the inception of the Downtown State College Improvement District in 2002. It currently consists of two full-time associates, Joe Bellehumeur and Damian Cabrera, and one part-time associate, Jon Spearly. The team works under the supervision of Jeffries. While Bellehumeur and Cabrera have worked for the district since 2021, Spearly is relatively new, having started this past February. But he fits in perfectly like that missing puzzle piece.
“It’s like he’s been here forever,” Jeffries said of the latest addition. “We have a really great team that we’re really excited about.”
Armed with large trash bins and the powerful residue remover Goof Off, the team is responsible for cleaning up an area starting from the downtown side of College Avenue to Highland Avenue and Atherton Street to Sowers Street.
While they’re not responsible for the municipal trash cans downtown, they will remove excess waste if it’s overflowing, particularly on a windy day to prevent spillage. They also go into the borough parking garages and their stairwells to assist with cleanup, especially when the weather is rainy and working outside isn’t as easy as usual.
Bellehumeur considers himself an outdoor person, even taking part in Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center’s program for bird binding, a way to collect data on birds by tagging them.
Picking up discarded cigarette butts is especially important for Bellehumeur.
“Cigarettes consist of fiberglass. That’s the insulation inside your house,” Bellehumeur said. “You see our storm drains and they all say don’t dump stuff in here because it (empties) into Spring Creek.
“The broader world view for me consists of more than just ‘Hey this is a pretty downtown we’re keeping clean,’ but also how the effects of our activities here have an impact on the streams and waterways.”
Removing offensive stickers and inappropriate graffiti from downtown is also a part of the Clean Team’s responsibility.
“I have an ongoing battle with graffiti but I welcome it with open arms,” said Bellehumeur, who is often met with what seems to be the same repeat offender. But using up the last of his Goof Off was the final straw.
“You have successfully depleted my resources. Now this is war!” Bellehumeur jokingly warned.
Cabrera recently had to clear up a massive amount of trash from two different dumpsters and frequently comes across what he likens to a perfect storm.
“Some days you’ll find things more interesting than others,” Cabrera said. “One morning I came across a tree like in a Charlie Brown Christmas that had an empty milk carton and a bag of popcorn.”
It was almost a strange form of art, and he wondered how they ended up in the tree. “It’s what I like to call a perfect mess,” he said.
Some of the more unusual articles destined for cleanup that Cabrera and the team have come across range from unopened cans of beer to loaves of bread to the more mysterious live 9 mm bullet and even a trout on Calder Way.
The district sends out a monthly newsletter to subscribers featuring not only its upcoming events downtown but also the “Clean Team Corner.” It includes some of the team’s interesting findings as well as an added bonus showing statistics about how much trash has been removed from the previous month.
For example, in April, when Penn State students were still in full session, the team cleaned up 1106 food spills, 335 glass spills, 43 vomits, 40 dog wastes and removed 82 fifty-gallon cans of litter from the designated district area.
By comparison, the month of May, which included a mass exodus of tens of thousands of students away from the area for the summer break, saw a decrease in some of those numbers with 820 food spills, 410 glass spills, 24 vomits, 17 dog wastes and a total removal of 60 fifty-gallon cans of litter. June continued the downward trend with 316 food spills, 154 glass spills, four vomits, 18 dog wastes and 40 fifty-gallon cans of litter.
While one might assume that the clean-ups after State Paddy’s Day or the final bar crawl of the academic year to be among the team’s most daunting tasks, nothing compares to the immense effort usually needed after Penn State football games. However, the chaos after local downtown events is nothing compared to what Cabrera recently experienced in Brooklyn, New York.
“I noticed that their everyday trash was our football game day trash,” Cabrera said. “I just wanted to grab two or three guys there and spend two hours cleaning up a block.”
Bellehumeur had a similar experience when visiting northeastern Pennsylvania. “I was in Wilkes-Barre and there was just garbage everywhere,” he said.
In addition to keeping their district clean, the team also gathers lost phones, IDs and other forgotten items and holds onto them in the district’s office located in the Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza.
In the past few years, the team has also added a community garden on Calder Way near Pugh Street. However, due to upcoming construction on Calder Way and the Pugh Street garage, they are currently looking for a new space to put a more permanent garden.
When the team is off the clock, they each enjoy creating their own art in one way or another. Bellehumeur met Cabrera at the Nittany Mall in 2016 when Cabrera, an artist and entertainer, drew a caricature of him. Bellehumeur then met Spearly through State College’s music scene.
Bellehumeur performs music under the moniker Joe Belle, playing guitar, banjo and the harmonica. He also produces his own music. He has self recorded and released EPs and has taken part in the Rhoneymeade Fest at 3 Dots Downtown.
“My songwriting style is more of a bluesy, folk intermixed with some rock stuff,” Bellehumeur said. “But then I do like more of an electronic ambient. There’s a big upswing of experimental music (in State College).
Spearly plays guitar and bass and produces music as well.
“I kind of fancy myself a bit like a producer, but there’s big air quotes around that” Spearly jokes.
He has recorded and produced albums by a local punk band, and will soon be producing music with Bellehumeur.
While he doesn’t necessarily play any instruments, Cabrera does count himself as a music enthusiast and some of that has made its way into his videos and live performances under the pseudonym Monster D.
“Imagine if you combined a caricature artist and a party clown with Alice Cooper,” he described his character. “I’ve got a flair for the dramatic.”
Cabrera entertains the masses with live performances and draws caricatures at events like Fall Fest and Light Up Downtown. Wearing his signature cape and hat, Monster D most recently amused the crowds during the Central PA 4th Fest parade.
But when they’re back to work on the clean team, the only performance they are concerned with is keeping the Downtown Improvement District clean, safe and alluring for locals and visitors.
“It’s nice to know you’re not going to step on something that gets stuck on the bottom of your shoe,” Bellehumeur said. “For me, it’s chiefly an environmental thing but it’s also an aesthetic thing.”
Jeffries agrees that while it is about keeping downtown appealing, the team is passionate about their daily duties.
“We are all very engaged and care deeply about the town,” she said. “We’re really proud of what they do.”
