The City of Hillsdale Public Services team has orchestrated events throughout early April in an effort to clean the local area of brush and litter. On April 5, they conducted a community-wide brush collection in which residents were encouraged to leave any brush they had gathered out for curbside pickup at 7 a.m. On April 10, Modern Waste Systems conducted a similar event, asking for yard waste as opposed to brush.
These events and others like them are run through Hillsdale Public Services, specifically through Foreman Jason Blake. He was also recently involved in a brush collection for Mrs. Stock’s Park and was accompanied by a team of volunteers. He said he is happy with the work they completed, but recognizes that there’s more to be done.
“We had some luck with a couple of spots,” Blake said. “We were expecting a bigger group, but we did get some good things done.”
Although there weren’t many volunteers, the ones who came made it possible to conduct the clean-up services, Director of Public Services Jake Hammel said.
“I think we had probably 15 to 18 volunteers,” Hammel said. “Some came and weren’t here very long, or got reallocated. It really depends on the moment.”
Despite the relatively low number of participants, the team accomplished a lot in a short amount of time.
“The clean-up from Stock’s Park produced seven cubic yards of brush, which is quite substantial,” Blake said. “There was also three or four yards of trash, which is a small dump truck’s load. Overall, it was about three dump truck’s loads of sticks and one of trash.”
The Public Service Department makes a consistent effort to provide volunteering opportunities to members of the community throughout the changing seasons. That’s why they make a consistent effort to provide volunteering opportunities to the members of the community.
“We actually do things like this pretty much throughout the year,” Hammel said. “We keep a list of things we could use help with: cleaning, painting, raking, shoveling, or even simple things like picking up sticks in the cemetery.”
In fact, there are more projects to be taken care of before summer begins.
“We’re looking to find a group to help paint picnic tables, which would be done in the parks,” Blake said. “If folks are interested we could use their help in painting about 40 of them for the time being. One of those time-consuming projects where many hands make light work.”
Any interested individual or group should contact the Public Services Department at (517) 437-6490 for more information.
