A new effort to develop pride in the city of Blytheville is on the horizon, sparked by the Blytheville Code Enforcement office.
The “Adopt a Block Program” would incentivize members of the community to help keep the city clean. Code enforcement officer Janice Smith created the idea seeing some Blytheville citizens already committed to cleaning the town, but also noticing more effort is needed.
“I get phone calls from people all the time saying, ‘we’re working and we’re cleaning up this area but nobody is helping. I’m doing it all by myself,’” Smith said.
“I see a need because we’re tearing down houses, but on a lot of the properties and in the street, you just see loose trash. That’s nobody’s job to just go out in the community and pick it up. Every now and then we may have community service workers and use them, but most times if we get too many phone calls we’ll just go pick it up ourselves.”
With this program, organizations could sign up to adopt a block and commit to cleaning the area at least six times a year. After their first six months, the group, organization or family would have their own pole sign posted in that area.
“I was speaking to Mr. [Shannon] Duck Sims and he was telling about his nonprofit and all the things they’ve done and contributed that I’ve never knew of,” Smith said. “A lot of times people are doing things in the community that others may not know about. With this program we could have the organizations posted and people could know when they’re out doing things and promote that.”
Additionally, on each organization’s anniversary date, they would receive a certificate awarded by Blytheville Mayor James Sanders recognizing the work completed throughout the year. Although the program hasn’t taken full flight yet, Smith is looking to further work out the details and have it in motion by the first of the year.
The Code Enforcement office is also approaching house number 100 on the tear down project. The initiative was started in August of 2019 to rid the city of older, vacant homes that have been abandoned.
“The mayor called me in one day and let me know what his vision was and what he wanted to be done. (City of Blytheville CFO) John Callens was there as well to let us know how we were doing with the budget. (City attorney) Chris Brown was also brought in and then assistant attorney Jessica Thomasson. I worked hand in hand with her to properly tear down the houses,” Smith said.
“A lot of the properties that were condemned, weren’t condemned probably. That’s why we brought Jessica in. Because we had to go back before we started tearing down to make sure all the paperwork was lined up.”
Smith added, “This year we focused a lot on vegetation. So we sent letters to the owners and cleared out South 15th and 16th street between Stuart and Mchaney because that was just like a forest. Focusing on the vegetation this year, we didn’t do as many houses as we normally would’ve done.”
Despite the slight change in focus this year in the project, the city has continued to tear down the abandoned homes and has house number 99 scheduled for later this month.