This home-grown crew cleans downtown Everett every morning

EVERETT — With the pink tinge of sunrise warming the sides of buildings in downtown Everett, Rich Webber began his daily ritual. He climbed in his white pickup truck and slowly perused streets and alleyways, on the hunt for graffiti or discarded mattresses that appeared overnight.

“There’s one,” he said Monday, pointing to a black spraypainted “rad” on an electrical box.

Before the city comes to life in the morning, six neon-vested crew members work their way through downtown cleaning the streets, removing graffiti, emptying trashcans and picking up litter left overnight. They begin at 5 a.m. and work until about 11 a.m. to maintain the appearance of downtown businesses.

The Downtown Everett Association started the team about 15 years ago with cleaning 15 square blocks. They expanded to 36 last year, Webber said. Like the association, the effort is funded by the owners of property in that area.

Cruising the streets of downtown is like memory lane for Webber. As he rolled through alleyways, he pointed out the many locations his dad, late Everett muralist Bernie Webber, had office spaces throughout the years.

Webber and his brother, Greg, who joined the crew after retirement, have childhood ties with many of the older buildings they’re now working to maintain. On Hewitt and Oakes avenues, the building that now houses Van Winkles Interiors used to be a sporting goods store they’d visit as kids.

Much of their father’s work portrayed aspects of Everett — including its buildings and its mayors.

“He was an Everett man through and through,” Webber said.

His father scraped by supporting the family’s 10 kids, six cats and two dogs on his artist wages, he said. So celebrating holidays and getting involved with community events took the place of vacations.

The longest Rich Webber, 59, has ever been away from Everett was a two-week trip to Ireland.

“But it’s always nice to come back home,” he said.

Many of his siblings have stuck around as well.

“We’re always here, driving around and waving at somebody or another,” he said.

Webber can’t make it through his morning rounds without being stopped a time or two by old friends.

His workers also have deep ties to the city they keep tidy.

Cody MacDougall, who’s been on the team about four months, has lived in Everett since the second grade. He graduated from Everett High in 2010.

“It’s nice to go home and feel good about what we do,” he said.

If the crew were to miss just a few days of work, downtown would look drastically different, he said.

On Monday, alleyway spoils included a run-down scooter, some infant car seats and a handful of change.

That’s a tame haul for Greg Webber, who once found a sword.

The craziest thing to show up in Everett’s streets? A semi-automatic rifle, which Webber said the crew came across abandoned behind a building about eight years ago.

More typical are old mattresses or furniture.

Every morning, Webber said they can count on the emergence of at least 10 new graffiti marks.

Five appeared overnight from Sunday in the alleyway between Wetmore and Rockefeller alone.

The crews remove the vandalism as quickly as possible, to keep on top of the never-ending flow and to make removal easier. It’s best to get the paint off within a day or two.

Often, not every bit can be erased. So they do their best to match the building’s paint and patch it over.

The traces of covered-up graffiti — slightly mismatched rectangles on the side of a building or an electrical box — can be seen all over downtown.

During their rounds, the crew often encounters those who are experiencing homelessness. If the workers believe the person is impeding business, they’ll call police, Webber said.

Much of what the team does is “invisible,” said Dana Oliver, executive director of the Downtown Everett Association. People don’t notice a lack of litter on the streets, she said. But if there were trash strewn around, it would be different.

“What people don’t see, trash and litter, is their success,” she said.

Even after patrolling the streets morning after morning, Webber said he never gets tired of driving around town.

On weekends, he usually heads down from his house near Evergreen Cemetery to grab a coffee and say hello to people he knows.

“It sort of has a different light on the weekend,” he said. “I see less work and more enjoy seeing others enjoying the downtown.”

Sometimes, though, he’ll stop to empty the occasional overflowing trashcan when he sees it.

Webber’s wife, Susie, shares his passion for keeping Everett clean. She manages the books for his team and will hit the streets with them some mornings.

Webber has seen Everett ebb and flow throughout the years.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was a “going town,” he said. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the downtown area was eerily empty.

“It was like a ghost town,” Webber said.

But now, things are beginning to pick back up. There are more people on the sidewalks, more businesses filling the storefronts.

Webber lives and works in town. Many of his Everett High classmates do the same.

“I kind of live and breathe Everett,” he said.

But with new apartment complexes going in downtown, people who have moved to Everett now identify it as their city, too.

“We’re kind of the old salt of Everett,” he said. “And the newcomers add to us. Maybe they’re the pepper or the thyme. But together, we’re the season of Everett.”

Julia-Grace Sanders: 425-339-3439; jgsanders@heraldnet.com.