The meeting last night was to plan for the big cleanup coming this Saturday. One of the outcomes was the decision to build boardwalks this Friday at 3:00. Meet over at the Montessori School if you'd like to help out.
In attendance at last night's planning meeting for Saturday's Clean-Up: Jon Soul, Steve Godfrey, John Davenport, Will Smith, Matthew Linn, Carolyn Manning, Cynthia Keith, Andy Goldthwaite, Loren Demerath.
Jon said he and Andy have established a loop trail with the help of Ed Leuch and Sarah Savage and others. This will people to see what a nice nature trial looks like. They discovered an old swithback trail going up to the southeast corner of the Stoner Lab school field.
On Saturday, we'll have signage, black containers, bananas/water/coffee/paper towels, two tables at Montessori and Valencia, tools, and a first aid kit.
In the ravine there's a lot of trash and large scale junk like appliances and the like. There's a large storm drain on the southern end of Viking and they can be labeled as needing intervention. "Tin can crossing" where a lot of cans and bottles are is getting flooded by run off from Galloway and Olive street and the water is going into the drain. Another drain off of East Washington is one Jon has also been monitoring. These impact the area and we could identify what needs to be done with them help with runoff and flooding.
Matthew mentioned that Jennifer Zumbado has info on all the drains.
Jon said SPAR has been very helpful asking what they can do. At our request they put in a gate on the southern fence, but we won't use that Saturday because the trail is on a hillside there and needs shoring up first.
We'll need to create signage on Viking and at the Valencia parking lot. Valencia will serve as the historical information center for the event and greenway. Jeff Girard will be a main person at that table. Other local residents including Will Smith will welcome people and help host the table. Will and Loren will print out some of the old historical maps of the area.
Matthew volunteered to bring coffee and Jon said he could use Montessori's coffee makers. Matthew will have coffee carafes at both tables. Steve suggested contact info sheets that could be at each table. John noted that Sarah Savage has been out with Ed Leuch and would be good at the Montessori table helping with nature trail educational stuff. Malari Coburn would be good at the Valencia base on historical stuff.
The city will provide a trash dumpster at Valencia, and Michael Hughes of Hughes Recycling will be providing as many garbage totes as we want as well as dollies and other collecting devices. We'll need someone at the dumpsters to help sort. Andy said the best strategy would be have people equiped with buckets and they fill their buckets up with trash at Tin Can Crossing and bring them back up to dump them in the larger recepticles.
John Davenport volunteered to be the sorter at Valencia.
Litter grabbers will be helpful that we may be able to get from Shreveport Green.
We'll have a training session and hazards talk that Andy can give about poison ivy, ticks, snakes.
Andy and others will start at the shed and gather up tools and take it to Valencia. Jon will be there early and will lay out the tools people will need.
Carolyn will bring a first aid kit.
Jon then went over the Montessori side set up:
Sevier Street will be blocked off as it was last year. The ridge along Galloway will be cleaned up, to stop the trend of people throwing trash into that brush and forested area.
Two tents will be across Sevier Street from the trail head. The bird watching group will have a table there. They'll be there early and will have walked it. They'll have literature on birding and how to get your family outdoors.
We'll also have a greenway flier table there. Food and refreshments will be at the adjoining tent.
Live music entertainment by Brittany Maddux will be from 11:30 to 12:30, and we'll have a hat out with a sign saying "donations for the entertainment".
Thursday or Friday afternoon Jon will be making rudimentary boardwalks over the soggy area about twenty yards into the trail for about a fifty yard stretch.
Discussion turned briefly to land adjacent to Centenary that has been used to dump tires recently, but could eventually be a section of greenway. We think that the land was sold from Centenary to a Mr. Rossbottom, who lives in Dallas and owns many of the video poker machines in the area.
The group then adjourned to print maps and scout possible building materials being stored from past theater productions that we might ask Don Hooper about for boardwalk use.
Jon and Loren said they'd be up for helping Jon build boardwalks on Friday afternoon at 3:00. Any others who'd like to help are welcome!
The meeting will be in two weeks on April 5th.
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