April 20, 2011

Clean up set for April 30

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Residents of Granville are encouraged to get out and clean up the trash left behind after a long winter April 30 for the third Granville Community Service Day.

The day starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m. for those who plan to volunteer and join groups from the community and high school as they complete clean up projects around the village and parts of the town.

Volunteers will gather at Veterans Park and meet their once again to end the day of collecting trash, sweeping and planting new flowers and trees. Bright orange bags can be found at the town highway garage as well as the town hall.

Granville Town Supervisor Matt Hicks said April 14 at the town meeting groups from the FFA and FBLA under the supervision of Terry Wheeler will be out in force on the last Saturday of the month.

Hicks said residents are again 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 Routes 22 and 149 to any major portions of the main thoroughfares in the town.

Hicks said the orange bags will be collected by the highway department.

Groups coming together to clean up roadside trash included both Granville Democratic and Republican parties, the Border Riders snowmobile club, the Lions Club and Granville Rotary along with the FFA and civic-minded residents with no organizational affiliation for a community-wide spruce up effort.

The first effort of this kind took place in 2009 with the Washington County Youth Bureau headed up by Alternative Sentencing’s Mike Gray. Gray helped to coordinate the effort and brought a trailer full of tools and bright safety vests for visibility as well as hot dogs and a post-cleanup cook out.

The trash collecting efforts in 2010 also yielded major results when large groups of resident volunteers joined more than 120 youth volunteers in cleaning up.

Wheeler said after seeing how it was done he was sure the kids could organize the next event themselves to make it more youth-driven day. Students organized the 2010 effort and have been hard at work organizing the event for this year, he said.