Two agencies in Ogdensburg whose mission it is to help the needy are grappling with a problem that they don’t need: trash dropped outside their doors.

Officials at St. Vincent de Paul, 1115 Ford St., and the Salvation Army Seek-N-Find store, 727 State St., say the dropping off of garbage, used furniture and old appliances isn’t as blatant as it has been in the recent past. Still, they would prefer that people stick to donating used clothing and food and do it during business hours.

“We don’t have a problem anymore,” Frank F. Bateman, St. Vincent de Paul’s treasurer, said Friday. “Here and there we get a bag.”

Salvation Army Capt. Angela S. Shaffer said that the illicit trash deposits both in and out of the Seek-N-Find store’s parking lot dumpster have decreased.

“It’s not really that bad,” she said, adding that the only significant accumulation occurs in the aftermath of seasonal yard sales in the city.

All those smelly $5 easy chairs and dead 75-cent television sets and radios end up in and surrounding the dumpster.

“They don’t want to have to pay to haul it away,” Mrs. Shaffer said.

So it falls to the Salvation Army to pay up. Mrs. Shaffer said the total monthly bill, including solid waste transfer station tipping fees and the cost of gasoline, comes to between $20 and $30 a month. That’s hardly a budget buster, she said, but it does siphon money from needs closer to the charity’s mission.

“That’s $20 to $30 we could use toward buying food,” Mrs. Shaffer said.

Mr. Bateman said St. Vincent de Paul stopped accepting used furniture a decade ago when the bulk of accumulation became too much. The drop-off point has usually been a narrow space between the building’s west side and a lane. He said the agency has probably spent in recent years “a few hundred dollars” to have the unwanted trash hauled away.

Mr. Bateman said the installation last summer of an outdoor surveillance camera has been successful in cutting down on the illicit dumping. People know they are being watched and move on.

“That camera is doing its job,” he said.

The St. Vincent de Paul store, Mr. Bateman said, “is a an asset to this community. We don’t want people being afraid to go there.”

The Seek-N-Find store’s hours of business are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. The telephone number is 393-4919.

The St. Vincent de Paul store’s hours are Monday through Friday, 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday, noon to 3 p.m. The telephone number is 393-6579.

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