Downtown beautification, cemetery flowers receive City Council boost

Stellar things keep happening in downtown Greencastle.

The latest development is the hiring of a part-time downtown beautification employee within the Department of Public Works.

The City Council took action at its April meeting to turn a fulltime position in the Department of Public Works into two part-time positions, citing the flexibility of having a person do maintenance and clean-up in the downtown.

Rick Long, formerly an assistant under Department Public Work Director Brad Phillips, is already on the job, reported City Councilman Dave Murray, who has been an advocate of the new position since coming on the City Council.

"It's taken two years to get to this point," Murray said. "I'm delighted.

"I say that," Murray added, "because people are making tens of millions of dollars in investments in the downtown area and it hasn't looked up to a Stellar Community. We're finally getting there. I'm just really happy now we have some resources to address that and get it cleaned up and keep it cleaned up."

In other words, even more people might linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty and forget all their troubles, forget all their cares if downtown really is cleaner and brighter, as singer Petula Clark suggested back in the 1960s.

Mayor Bill Dory told the Banner Graphic the new position will start as part-time and be re-evaluated at the end of the year.

Long's duties will include assuring downtown streets stay clean, planters are maintained and trash containers emptied, along with helping set up for special downtown events, maintaining landscaping at City Hall and city parking lots and mowing the grassy areas on the streetside bump-outs in the downtown.

The position could also serve as "a floater at times," Dory said, should the Park Department or Cemetery Department be in need of extra manpower for an important project or weather emergency.

Meanwhile, the mayor also noted that new City Planner Scott Zimmerman has been busy inventorying downtown benches, trash cans and other amenities in advance of getting estimates on painting and repairing those items later this year.

He's taken photographs and been researching original purchase prices on the equipment as well, it was noted.

In a somewhat related matter, among the items approved in the monthly claims packet, Councilman Murray noted, was a $5,800 expenditure for plantings/plugs and seeds to create a 10-acre Pollinator Habitat Garden at Forest Hill Cemetery.

The planting is designed to do more than beautify the area around the covered bridge in the cemetery with various native wild flowers, it also could reduce the acreage that needs regular mowing and trimming, cutting down on maintenance costs in the process.

"It's going to take two to three years to really bloom out," Murray said, "but if it works, it may be something we can do on a larger scale. We've spent a lot of time talking about the cemetery and how we can reduce those costs."

The cost of the seed will largely be reimbursed by Quail Forever and the Putnam County Soil and Water Conservation District, Mayor Dory said.

"This is an interesting partnership for us," the mayor added, noting it is part of the city's "overall sustainability efforts to somewhat protect the environment while cutting down on the time and expense of mowing an extra 10 acres."

He asked the public to have some patience with the project, however, as it will probably "take a couple years to fully come out."

In time, he said, he expects the addition of signage to help identify the plantings for people strolling through the area, envisioning the section as an "educational component."

The mayor described the area as the field to the left of the cemetery entrance along Keightly Road and Cemetery Road east to the tree line. In general, he said, the area around the small covered bridge.

Dory said he's been told that section was "a fill area that is not great to build on." No gravesites exist in that location, he said.

Weather permitting the planting at the cemetery will commence Saturday morning, Mayor Dory said.