The Chapala government is eager to turn the municipality into a spotless place to live or visit. Academic staff at the Escuela Preparatoria Regional (Prepa Chapala) have a mission to guide their students towards developing strong bonds with their community. Those aims will lock together with the Saturday, October 26 launch of Chapala Te Quiero Limpio, a new initiative to spruce up the area and keep it tidy.
Mayor Joaquin Huerta and Prepa director Candido Cardenas will jointly lead the first phase of the Clean Chapala campaign with back-to-back kick-offs starting at 8 a.m. At the school campus they will give a send off to 1,000 students who will break up into various faculty-led teams. From the steps of city hall they will dispatch work brigades made up of government employees and officials.
The groups will fan out in all directions to canvas neighborhoods in Chapala, San Antonio Tlayacapan, Ajijic, Santa Cruz de la Soledad and San Nicolas de Ibarra. One task will be to collect and bag litter found strewn in the street, but their broader objective is to knock on doors to coax every home owner, tenant and business into meeting their civic and legal duties to maintain property fronts free of trash and weeds.“Chapala’s main vocation is tourism. We have to keep the municipality clean,” Huerta said in announcing details of the project to local reporters. “It’s vital to involve citizens in the clean-up effort and to get across the message that is easier if we don’t litter to begin with.”
He put out a general call for everyone to get out on launch day to sweep and weed outside their places of residence and business. People who share his vision are also encouraged to volunteer to clean up vacant lots, abandoned properties and other unsightly spots in their neighborhoods.
To arrange for prompt refuse pick-up afterwards, interested parties should register at the reception desk located at the entrance to the city hall lobby or contact Catastro property registry director Juan Carlos Pelayo by phone at 765-8000, extension 143.
The local GYSA towing company has already signed on to provide free service to owners of broken down vehicles who request having them hauled from the street to more discrete locations.
According to the mayor, the Chapala Limpio program will initially be limited to a socialization and public awareness campaign running for the next three months. After that the city government will begin stricter application of the municipality’s Public Sanitation code which outlines a scale of fines for violations such as littering, illegal dumping and exceeding time limits for leaving household wastes, garden rubbish and construction rubble out in the street.