Board of Supervisors address trash on roads
Many people have been seeing trash build up on the sides of the roads throughout Oktibbeha County - and by extension, Starkville.
In the last week, many concerned citizens have brought up the issue, and the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors have heard many of them and have seen the trash themselves.
In the March 1 Board of Supervisors meeting, the Board along with Sheriff Steve Gladney and Fred Baggett, the Road Manager for the county, addressed the issue and talked of the problems they have run into during the pandemic in being able to assemble road clean up crews.
“I just want to say it’s really sad how much trash there is on the road side,” Bricklee Miller, District 4 Supervisor, said. “It’s so terrible, and I know it’s suppose to be prettier, but I know there’s been a shortage of people wanting to help.”
Sheriff Gladney said they only had one inmate they could trust to help and there was an incident this weekend, so now they are looking to find more to trust to help with the trash pickup. The jails right now are at a very limited capacity because of COVID, and there are restrictions on how many people can be in a van together to go to the trash pickup locations.
“We’ve been trying to hit this from
a lot of different angles,” District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer said. “Not only have we been talking to the sheriff, but we’ve been talking with MDOC [Mississippi Department of Corrections]. Before the pandemic, they had a group that would come out and do it. I think they’re getting ready to restart that. We’ve also been talking to individuals with United Way and they’ve set up some clean up days where people can sign up to volunteer, but we need to get serious about the trash out in the county. I think the time has come down to where we need to invest a little resources behind
trying to clean up our county.”
The Board agreed as a whole along with Sheriff Gladney and Mr. Baggett that the trash along the roads is an issue, and they are working on finding a solution that does not violate COVID-19 guidelines as stated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.