The Greenwood City Council wants to spread awareness of how to dispose of old tires properly.
“I think we and the county need to get it out there a little better that there is a trailer on Highway 7 that people can take their tires to,” said Council President Ronnie Stevenson.
Ward 4’s Charles McCoy said he learned of grant money to aid in tire disposal while attending the Mississippi Municipal League conference in Jackson last week and asked Public Works Director Susan Bailey how to get Leflore County workers to help the city picking up old tires.
Bailey clarified that tires can be taken to the Mississippi 7 waste tire collection site, and the county pays to have the tires taken from there somewhere else.
“There are times on a Saturday morning (that) I do have one individual that will go out with another individual and pick up tires in the city,” she said. “They could pick up over 100 on Saturday morning. We were keeping records of how many they were picking up. They’d go that Saturday, they’d go the next Saturday and get just as many.”
She said only so many tires can be taken at a time to the county drop-off site because the trailers are emptied only about once a month.
“The people, they need to bootstrap up and start cleaning up their streets and help us,” said Ward 1’s Johnny Jennings, who frequently speaks up about littering at council meetings.
Ward 5’s Andrew Powell said that in his ward, he paid several people to help pick up tires and take them to the county drop-off.
Stevenson suggested opening the drop-off site on Saturday for a few hours to allow people to deliver their tires there when they cannot find time on weekdays.
In other business:
- Mayor Carolyn McAd-ams announced the city has ordered self-test COVID-19 kits.
“We can start doing our in-house COVID testing instead of our employees going to wait hours and hours to get tested,” she said, adding the turnaround time for a test is from 15 to 20 minutes.
- McAdams said downtown’s Historic Elks Building has generated more than $27,000 in revenue since the city purchased it for $150,000 about two years ago.
“I think that’s a good return on our money,” she said. “Even though we’ve had to make some repairs and are making some repairs now, pretty much it’s paying for itself.”
- The mayor announced a meeting with representatives from Keep Mississippi Beautiful on Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce building. Both the city and Leflore County have entered into a partnership with the organization to help address littering in the area.
- Contact Kevin Edwards at 662-581-7233 or kedwards@gwcommonwealth.com.
