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Green Up/Clean Up helps make Polson even prettier

by Michelle Lovato? Lake County Leader
| May 5, 2016 9:25 AM

The cleanup command center at the North Lake County Library in Polson was popping with volunteers for six hours Friday, signing out clean-up volunteers, distributing gear and offering coffee, water and cookies to anyone who wanted them. 

One after another, community members, some of which just wanted to make Polson a cleaner community, arrived and took a look at a command center map of Polson which soon became a master plan for civic-minded people working together for a common good.

Polson Community Clean Up/Green Up organizers spent Friday signing in volunteers and dispatching them to different areas around Polson to pick up trash.

Armed with plastic gloves, trash bags and bright orange safety vests, children and adult participants made it their business to clear the way for a clean summer.

Among the first to arrive for duty was a large string of community-service recipients whose slow travels through the Lake County legal system earned them the duty, and headache, of calling the Lake County Detention Center on a required weekly basis to see if there was room in the jail so they could serve their required jail time. 

Normally, if there is no room at the jail, convicted persons can either call back next week to see if there is any room, or travel to Sanders County, pay a fee and do their time at the Sanders County Jail, Owens said. Lake County's ongoing detention center clog up often means that convicts with active sentences cannot complete their service.

But this year, Polson Community Clean Up/Green Up organizers presented the over-burdened jail system an alternative through Polson clean-up day community service. People given community service sentences most often committed minor misdemeanor offenses.

And a steady stream of those men and women eligible to participate showed up first thing in the morning to get their service completed. 

Once community-service participants were assigned an area, Polson Community Clean Up/Green Up volunteers held them accountable by checking up on them throughout the day. 

But community-service recipients were just one group included in those who participated. Many families and groups of volunteers who simply wanted to help the city's sites green up also arrived for their gear.

Just after lunchtime, volunteers of a vastly different sort were hopping.

Mrs. Crumbs' Cherry Valley Elementary School first graders held hands with their walking partners and made their way to Riverside Park in Polson. Mrs. Crumbs' class, along with a classroom volunteer and student teacher Brynn Rowley were only one of several groups of students who represented all Polson School District facilities, who got the unique chance to leave their schoolwork behind, don plastic gloves and hunt for trash of any kind. 

Polson Clean Up/Green Up ran Friday through Sunday and was open to anyone who wanted to help and garnered untold amounts of trash off the ground that will now make Polson even prettier. 

The city of Polson will continue to offer Polson clean-friendly projects in May.