The scene at a house on Wallace Street near McClaren Saturday morning.
The big question leading up to last weekend’s Red Bank Townwide Yard sale — how much trash would be left out afterward — has been answered.
“There were zero problems, from where I’m sitting,” director of Public Utilties Gary Watson told redbankgreen yesterday. “If I saw four spots where there was leftover waste from the yard sale, it was a lot.”
Concern that the sale would result in tons of unsold junk being left on the borough’s curbs for pickup, thus driving up waste-removal costs, was one reason town officials insisted on a $10 fee for seller participation in the event, the first of its kind in the borough.
“You didn’t know what was going to happen. Nobody knew,” Watson said. But compliance with waste-pickup rules was “beyond good,” he said.
A portion of the yard sale registration fee, which generated about $1,500 in revenue, was used to offset the cost of promoting the event in the form of fliers and ground signs.
Watson said the only strain the event put on the local government was clerical; his department processed the registrations and collected the funds.
“That was the only headache I had, and it wasn’t even enough to complain about,” he said. Three employees in the department — Maria Rotolo, Anne Grippe and Anne Hughes — “really bought into” the event and made extra effort to create a database of info, he said.
The borough’s special events committee is expected to review the event next month. Event organizer Audrey Oldoerp has said she’d like it to be an annual event.
