Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Volunteer Karlie Houert gives a slide a bit of color using spray paint during Saturday's cleanup at Northside Park.
Josh Olsen with Bell Pole and Lumber installs a wooden barrier surrounding playground equipment at Northside Park during Saturday's cleanup project hosted by the 2016 Leadership Cheyenne County class.
More than 30 people turned out Saturday morning to assist the 2016 Leadership Cheyenne County class in an all-day cleanup effort at the Northside Park in Sidney.
Leadership Cheyenne County is a program sponsored by the Cheyenne County Chamber of Commerce that aims to develop its participants into involved civic leaders and community volunteers.
Each class in the program comes up with a project during the year that benefits the community as a whole. This year, the class chose to do a revitalization of the Northside Park, located on the intersection of 18th Ave. and Ash St. near the Sioux Villa Apartments.
Volunteers helped with a variety of tasks throughout the day, including repainting and repairing playground equipment, trash pickup, replacing nets on the basketball court, sweeping sidewalks and whatever else was needed to revitalize the park.
Bell Pole and Lumber assisted the effort by cutting and placing wooden poles to act as a barrier around existing playground equipment. The area was also filled with pea gravel to provide children a safer environment in which they could play.
Other assisting businesses and organizations in the cleanup included the Scottsbluff Housing Authority, Woodis Welding, the Cheyenne County Chamber of Commerce, Arby's restaurant and Adams Industries.
Volunteer Junior Lucero, 14, lives in the area and utilizes the park for pickup basketball and football games. He said he liked that the community had come out to help cleanup their "ghetto park."
"I live (close by), so I come here a lot," Lucero said. "I used to play football, but there's a lot of stickers and it would always cut up our skin."
During the cleanup, Lucero said he helped paint over graffiti on the park's slide and other playground equipment.
"People wrote cuss words all over it, and that's not good for the kids," he said.
Lucero said he plans to help keep the park clean now that it is in a much better state than before.
"Every little kid here comes out to this playground," he said. "So we've got to keep it up for them."
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