 These are the hardworking men and women that do the tough jobs that help keep El Paso County moving. We want to make sure we have a clean community, healthy community, and a safe community. This is Tough Jobs. Hi, Joe. How you doing, Harry? How you doing? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. So where are we going to be heading to? About a couple miles west of here, we have a dilapidated broken down mobile home. We've been receiving some call complaints for concerned neighbors. This case has been going on for some time now and it's time that we come on property and get this mess cleaned up. Let's do it. Let's go. All right. All right, sir. So if you want to grab that sign. Certainly. And where are we going to be putting this? So we're going to put this right here. Right, so the public can view it. Basically the sign tells the community that we're here today to clean up this property, let everyone know that we're getting this project done today. And if they have any questions, we have a phone number right here. So that's the first step for our cleanup today. Alrighty. All right. What's the second step? Let's get going. Let's go. Nice roads. What are we taking apart today? What are we cleaning up? All right, Harry, we have a dilapidated mobile home. Right now our contractor, Junk King, is tearing it apart, putting it in dumpsters and taking it to the dump. So as you can kind of see, we have our officers out in this field picking up any type of trash that's scattered. It's really windy out here. So we don't want this trash going on to other people's property. We want to keep it contained. So Harry, are you a rattlesnake fan? As long as they stay in there part of the woods and I stay in mine. Yeah, I don't really, not a fan. So first thing for safety we got to do is plan your rattlesnake cars. Oh joy. Here you go. And I'm assuming they're fairly self-explanatory. Yup, you just gotta clip them in and you should be good. You ever have a snake attempt to penetrate these? No, but rather be safe than sorry. All right, let's head to the site. Okay, to clean all this up, because this looks like this is the main bulk of what's being cleaned today. How long does it normally take for the crew to do that? Harry, it really depends. We're out here in the elements. We'll be out here essentially until it's completely done. Whether that takes a day or a month or three months, we'll be out here until the job's finished. I'm looking around here and rules governing tires exposed on the property. What are you allowed to have? What can't you have? And anything else that most people would have indoors, but out here you find them outdoors. If you're on a residential property, you know it's really for residential purpose and we wanna make sure everything's clean. Storage of tires, if you have them, put them inside a garage. They're not allowed to be stored in your front lawn. Sofas that are indoor furniture. Again, that's gotta be moved to a garage or donated or put back inside your house. So Harry, remember everything we're taking today falls under that rubbish ordinance. So I think this piece would definitely fall under the rubbish ordinance. Just check. I would have to agree. No snakes or anything? Yeah. Let's grab it. Snag that, let's go throw it away. Something that's really important is we gotta be documenting. We gotta take some photos of before, during and after. So I think right here would be a great shot to take. All right. We got some equipment. We got our contractor. They're showing what's going on. Shows the rubbish we're removing. So why don't you take the camera here. What we're looking for is a nice wide angle shot. Okay. We wanna have a frame of reference. We wanna show subject matter. And we wanna show a little bit of action. We wanna get all of that. Not everything we can grab by hand. For example, this big piece right here, definitely we're gonna need some equipment probably to grab that. Especially with those nails hanging out. So that's when we get Bobcats with our contractor. They'll bring some heavy equipment and get the job done. And you know, pick that up. There's probably a cruder or two under there maybe. Possibly, yeah. We'll find out in a bit. Better than machine, doesn't it? Absolutely. I want you to meet John. He's our junk king contractor. Hello John. Nice to meet you, Harry. Nice to meet you. Pretty good. How is it partnering with the county? What's your good feeling about that? Well, the county's great. And they do a really good thing. I mean, all these cleanups that we do are usually, you know, something that really needs to be done. And unfortunately, some people just don't have the means or the aptitude, I guess, to do it. And they've got themselves into a situation. I mean, we did a clean out for a lady that you could tell everything was fine until a point. Maybe she got too old. Maybe there was other issues, you know, whatever. And then it just got away from her. And she was literally crying the whole time that we were picking it up, you know, because she couldn't thank us enough for, you know, trying to get her back to where she was. And she just couldn't do it. So we were there to help. And I mean, that had to give you a great feeling. Oh, it's great. I mean, you know, we love seeing the cleanup. It's amazing how much you just clean up our property and make somebody feel. Run this puppy. OK, so the first thing you're going to want to do, pull back on that one, watch what it does. OK, so you go down, you push forward. Goes up. OK. Push them forward, so you kind of get an idea. You want to hold them together. Back is forward. OK, I get it. Got it. Now separate them from one or the other, and you'll pivot. See that steel bathtub? Yep. We're going to pick it up, because that goes in our recycle pile. OK. What are some of the most interesting things that you have found on a cleanup? We've found everything from Molotov cocktails to human waste, all kinds of things. You've got to be careful what you're picking up. Yeah, we've seen quite a few interesting things. I would imagine. I would imagine. We're seeing all the other stuff, and then, boom, we find this mug. Yeah, we find all kinds of random objects that are stored in people's front lawns or outside. And unfortunately, with it being stored where it is, it falls under that rubbish ordinance. Oh, yeah, it would make sense. Yeah, if it was inside someone's house, we'd be good to go. But out here in the field, it's got to go to the dump. Will fish for food? That's a good mug to have, if you like to fish. I've been looking for a topper for my truck. Dumb question time. Can someone just come and take something off someone else's land? So I know this thing looks pretty nice. Someone needs a little TLC, I think. Just a little. But no, we can't take anything from anyone's property. We have to fall strictly under that rubbish ordinance, which I would say this is what fall under that. And two, everything goes to the dump. We don't keep or impound anything. Does the county take all the cost, accept the cost for this, or is there some sharing? So Harry, how it's done is the county pays our contractor once the work is completed. And then we bill the property owner. The property owner then has an opportunity to come into our office. And they could work out a payment plan within reason. If they don't come into our office, they don't reach out to us. What we do is we file a lien on the property for the cost of service. So when the property goes to sell, the county will get those funds back. And it'll go back into the cleanup fund to do more of these projects for the community. We talked about having volunteers. Give us some examples of how instances or how you've helped other people out. Sure. One that comes to mind is we helped a property owner out in Black Forest. We worked with a group with Fort Carson to kind of, they created this event to help this property owner. He had a lot of fallen trees from the Black Forest fire, a lot of scrap metal, and things like that. At this event, we had almost over 100 people there. So it was a community-wide effort, especially with a disabled veteran, to kind of get the property cleaned up and show that the community is there to help people like that. Harry, this is Charles Carlisle. Hi, Charles. How are you doing? I'm doing well, yourself? Oh, pretty good. You made a comment that to me sums up everything. Give us your take on why you do this job. To me, it's about respect. We're coming out into people's lives and telling them while they can and can't use their property and trying to make that connection with them, rope them into the community, see how their actions and conditions of the property falls into the rest of their neighborhood. And it really does help to build that community, build that bond between our local government and the citizens that we work with every day. Awesome. To me, that's the epitome of basically what everyone in the county does. I agree. Well, looks like we got quite a bit done today. Yeah, we got a lot done. We still got a lot to do. But usually, these projects can take a couple of days to a full week, depending on how big the project is. But hey, I'm glad you came out. Thanks for coming. Oh, thanks for having me. Joe, I really appreciated it. I've learned something today. Great, that was the goal. All righty. Thanks for joining us today. And we'll look for you next time on Tough Jobs. Just tell them to have a bar.