HUNDREDS HELP CLEAN UP CITY

Eighth Annual Kingston Clean Sweep brings out close to 400 volunteers

Hundreds of volunteers took time out of their day Saturday to help clean up and beautify the city.

The Eighth Annual Kingston Clean Sweep brought out close to 400 volunteers who picked up yard debris and trash along the city streets and in its parks, event co-chair Anna Brett said. She said the event largely focuses on the Broadway corridor, because it is the main road through the city that brings people from Uptown to Downtown.

“It’s nice to have it nice and clean and presentable,” Brett said.

Brett said after the volunteers bag up the debris, the city’s Department of Public Works comes through and collects the waste.

Several volunteers joined the Clean Sweep efforts as part of their own organizations’ beautification and cleaning efforts.

Heidi Kirschner, the chief executive officer of the YMCA of Kingston and Ulster County, said the Clean Sweep event got some of her staff and volunteers to come work cleaning up the outside of the facility, but they have more days planned.

“This is a nice kick in the butt to get us going,” Kirschner said. She said her group of five collected

approximately 20 bags of leaves and branches, along with four to eight bags of garbage that included a few dead birds and a dead cat.

Uptown, members of the Stockade Garden Society cleaned and spruced up the city’s Peace Park at the corner of North Front and Crown streets, while a group from the Kingston Uptown Business Association worked further down Crown Street planting boxwood shrubs in some of the city’s concrete planter boxes.

Melissa Winfield said the Stockade Garden Society weeded the Peace Park garden and laid down 40 bags of mulch, as well as cleaned up the park, as part of the Clean Sweep event.

Members of the society maintain the park yearround and even decorate it for the winter.

Winfield said that with people on their cellular phones all the time, the park “is a beautiful spot to just sit and disconnect.”

ARIÉL ZANGLA — DAILY FREEMAN Volunteers plant boxwood shrubs provided by the Kingston Uptown Business Association in planter boxes along Crown Street during the 8th Annual Kingston Clean Sweep event. Among the volunteers is Julie Jordan, left, co-chair of the Kingston Clean Sweep...

ROB DOLAN PHOTO PROVIDED Members of Cub Scout Pack 103 from St. James Church on Fair Street pose for a photo during cleanup at Academy Green in Kingston during the Clean Sweep. The pack’s cubmaster is Rob Dolan, who sent this photo.

ARIÉL ZANGLA—DAILY FREEMAN From left, Laura Nordstrom, youth development director of the YMCA, Aidan White, a Kingston High School student, and Joan Keating, facility director for the YMCA work outside the YMCA on Broadway in Kingston on Saturday during the city’s Clean Sweep.