COMMUNITY CLEAN-UP & CFD BENEFIT SCRAP DRIVE A ROUSING SUCCESS!

HELLOOOOO CONCORD!

Well, Saturday May 15th dawned sunny and bright and the line for the Community Clean-up started forming at Gottschalk Park around 0800.  Since I had been advertising the event hours  were between 0900 and 1300 for the last three months, I concluded that the early birds just wanted to make sure they had a spot in line.  God bless them, every one!

Anyhow, we had a record turnout for both the scrap drive and clean up effort.  At $10.00/load to dump trash – much of which can’t be dumped anywhere else – we took in a total of $710.00!  That was more than we’ve ever taken in before.  Ever.  When you consider that we pay $600.00 for the 2 compactor trucks and 2 men for the 4 hour event, and we paid about $300.00 to advertise it, that’s a wee bit of red ink, there; but we figure it’s way better to shell out these few bucks than to go around picking some of it up off the side of the road.  It’s also a really nice benefit for the residents of the Township.

We take almost everything during these drives, mattresses, couches, recliners, carpets, those old blue tarps, delapidated tricycles,  abandoned kid’s toys, derelict TV’s, we even took an old hot tub.  Most of those things you can’t take to a land fill or get rid of anywhere else.  We are your only affordable option and we sincerely appreciate your participation.  We do not however take any sort of hazardous waste or chemicals, nor do we take tires or batteries.

In their incredible generosity Emmons Service provides us with a 40 yard roll off box for our scrap metal collection and an operator for FREE!!!  They take whatever scrap we collect to Omni Source who separates it, recycles it and give us a check for the total.  Every penny we collect goes directly to the Concord Fire Department’s Firefighter’s Club, which is used in it’s entirety to purchase safety gear for our volunteer Emergency Response Personnel.  It is an incredibly worthy cause and a gesture of remarkable generosity by Emmons.  This was our best year ever for scrap collection, we transferred 2, completely packed-to-the-brim 40 yard boxes!  Considering the price of scrap currently, I’m thinking the CFD did really well.  Well see, soon enough!

It’s important that I make a deliberate mention the team of volunteers and helpers we’ve had here, too.  This is hard work and it takes many, many hands to make it light.  So first I would like to recognize Chief Lloyd Mosher and his band of merry firefighters and emergency responders.  I am consistently told that our CFD is the most participatory group of any township.  We’ve been doing this since I took office and they have been all hands on deck every year.  Every. Year.  Chief Mosher brings his backhoe and everyone pitches in to move the scrap and the trash.  They are the kind of people who make you proud to be a part of this community.

Then there are our old standbys: Sheryll Dishaw, Linda Cavasin and Kevin Bohl.  (Judy Clark would have been there too, but for recent surgery.)  It’s heartening to know some of our Board care enough about our community to put their shoulders to the wheel…

And Oh, I need to offer a hearty “Thank You” to the 3 people who came through the clean up and paid more than they were asked – one generous citizen donated $90.00!!! – to help support our efforts financially.  These guys are a pure blessing to our community.

And finally, I need to call out that number of people who make little or no effort to make a contribution to their community.  No community will flourish or prosper if everyone in it sits and watches everyone else do all the work.  Pitch in.  Help out.  Do something!

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