Saginaw Team Up to Clean Up Day on May 15 was still in progress, and Mayor Brenda Moore was mapping future plans.
She toured more than a half-dozen work sites where volunteers gathered at elementary schools and then fanned out into neighborhoods. These included Jessie Rouse, Loomis and Arthur Eddy on the East Side and Stone, Herig, Handley and Chester Miller on the West Side. The mayor offered encouragement, thank-yous and hugs to some among more than 100 volunteers from churches, neighborhood associations, union locals and youth groups.
Closing remarks took place while returning crew members chomped on Koegel’s franks and chips donated from Old Town’s Woody’s Hot Dogs. The prime sponsor was the Saginaw Community Foundation.
“Look at you all,” Moore intoned to the assembly at City Hall’s front steps. “Don’t tell me what you can’t do.”
In a more quiet setting, the mayor said she hopes to establish cleanup day as an annual event on the third Saturday of each May, with the first weekend occupied by Cinco de Mayo and the second weekend by Mother’s Day.
She also aims to assemble a specialty crew of trash haulers, landscapers and tree-trimmers so that future efforts may go beyond picking up trash, litter and debris.
Later in the day, she learned Saginaw is in line for a $200,000 state grant for cleanup purposes.
Meanwhile, for the remainder of this spring and summer:
If a group missed May 15 but still wishes to organize its own community cleanup project at a park or a vacant property, place trash bags and debris at curbside and contact the Inspections Division at 759-1540 or inspections@saginaw-mi.com.
To volunteer for a more intense project, similar to a Habitat housing blitz visit the One Week, One Street website or Facebook page. Their target area for the week of June 21-25 will be the former Webber School area along Elmwood and Beechwood.
For information on obtaining and maintaining an adjacent vacant lot for a cost as low as $180, if the prior owner failed to pay taxes, call the Saginaw County Land Bank Authority at 792-6028.
To donate gas money and cleanup equipment for Jimmie Truss, who is earning recognition and praise for volunteering to clean and mow vacant lots in his spare time free-of-charge, consider a gofundme site organized on the Facebook page of his wife, Alicia Truss.
