Sheldon, Iowa — Springtime in Sheldon means many things, and among them is the annual City-Wide Cleanup Week. This year, however, city officials say the COVID-19 pandemic has made many changes to business-as-usual, including to Cleanup Week.
If this were a normal year, City Manager Sam Kooiker says flags for Cleanup Week would have gone on sale this week.
(As above) “Flags were supposed to go on sale for cleanup week April one and we have decided with everything going on, because people need to come to the clerk’s office to get the flags and there really isn’t a good way to get the flags out in a you know, we would put Hy-Vee and Fareway in an awkward position if we asked them to sell flags for us like you know they sell the extra garbage tags, so we just decided at this point to delay cleanup week.”
Kooiker says Cleanup Week is important, and last year’s event set a new record.
(As above) “We want it to happen. it’s important for the community. Last year we set an all time record with a number of stops that we made and it was very nice because in addition to cleaning up the community it was you know a number of nuisances that we didn’t have to deal with because the people were helping their neighbors so we want this to happen we’re just in a holding pattern until things settle down.”
Since Cleanup Week has been postponed it has been suggested that this might be a good time for Sheldon residents to gather all their Cleanup Week stuff in one location, then put it all out when Cleanup Week is rescheduled.
(As above) “Yes that’s a good idea, and in addition to that we have a recycling container down by city hall, just north of the library, that is picked up twice a week now and it is almost always full so people are taking advantage of that. So you know you can still clean up some things if it’s recyclable, you can come down and put it in the container.”
Kooiker says Sheldon residents should stay tuned, because the City plans to reschedule Cleanup Week once the COVID-19 pandemic has passed.
