April 7, 2010

Cleanup day is set for April 24th

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Second Granville Community Service Day April 24

Organizers hope to see Granville Community Service Day 2010 be even bigger than last year’s event.

The April 24 cleanup will run from 9 a.m. until noon and end with a cookout. Volunteers will gather to start the day and end up at the Little League fields. Community Service Day will be a rain-or-shine event.

In the first effort in 2009 the Washington County Youth Bureau headed up by Mike Gray helped coordinate the effort that brought together various groups from high school students to political groups as well as service organizations, public servants and citizens not affiliated with any group to canvas the roadsides, parks and public areas of Granville for an outside spring cleaning.

Gray brought a trailer full of tools and bright safety vests for visibility as well as providing hotdogs and a post cleanup cookout. Bright orange trash bags were made available by the town and were later cleared up by town crews.

Residents were asked to clean up their own roadside, or if they preferred, to come out and join in cleaning up a public area from the roadsides of Route 22 to Veterans Park, covering major portions of the main thoroughfares in the town.

Roadside trash became a bipartisan issue as both Granville Democratic and Republican parties joined groups like the Border Riders snowmobile club, the Lions Club and Granville Rotary along with the Future Farmers of America in a community-wide spruce-up effort.

The trash collecting effort yielded major results when more than 120 youth volunteers joined other volunteers and homeowners in cleaning up following the long winter.

FFA adviser and high school teacher Terry Wheeler said after seeing how it was done he was sure the kids could organize the next one themselves to make it more youth-driven.

Wheeler said he spoke with club officers that day about taking the lead on the effort for next year and that work has paid off.

Wheeler said recently FFA members have been in contact with local groups as a part of the effort to coordinate another successful Granville Community Service Day.

Wheeler said he expected to see a bigger youth turnout this year as students need some community service time to fulfill graduation requirements at Granville.

Following last year’s cleanup efforts town highway supervisor John Tanner reported the materials bagged by the volunteers filled to capacity two tandem axle dump trucks.