 We're excited to be here today as we put forth the month of April as clean up Columbia Day as we all know since the pandemic we've had a bit of a crisis throughout our city in the Midlands with trash and the appearance and pride is a big thing that we have and we're the capital city and we're really excited about the program and the partnerships with the county, with CIU, citizens, our businesses, everybody being engaged to clean up Columbia. Cleaning up Columbia, one neighborhood at a time, one street at a time puts pride back in our neighborhoods. It gives us a reason why we're so happy to live in this beautiful city and how important it is to prevent crime, property damage and just the sense of pride that goes with it is so important for us as we continue. So as we look at cleaning up our environment, getting our neighborhoods so that it shines as people come through from all over the country as you know we get 15 million visitors in Columbia and they ride through all our communities every gateway and they take part of it. We want them to see who we truly are, the shining star in the middle of the state that is our capital city. With that I'm going to introduce my fellow council member, Miss Tina Herbert from District One who's going to have the first kickoff in District One of this cleanup effort to give us more about what we have happening here as part of the cleanup and then we'll have County Councilwoman Gretchen Barrett, we'll have John Black, the president of Columbia Council of Neighborhoods, we'll have Ram Serves, Dr. Christman from CIU here who will talk about their service day which is very exciting and for those of you who didn't know about it, but last year they had over 2100 people involved in their Ram service. They made not only a small dent, they made a huge dent and really sent the message and that's why we're here today. So with that I'd like to introduce Miss Tina Herbert. Thank you, Mayor Rickerman and I really want to commend you for this idea. I think for a while and we get people call us and they talk to us about the trash in the city, the trash in the city, what can we do to make the city look better and so I really like that you're taking this lead and kind of helping gather us together and then the best decision was to start in District One which is my district and we do a lot of neighborhoods themselves, they do a lot of cleanups and I like the cleanups because you get to know your neighbors. We have some interesting conversations during the cleanups so I encourage you all to have them and participate when your neighborhood is there. It makes you feel better and I think it encourages others so sometimes neighbors start competing with each other. I had a neighbor that moved in and I said, well I got to change some things. I went and got some new flowers. But the more we do I think it's contagious. I do want to announce that we will have six dumpsters spread around the district starting tomorrow which is Friday and I'm going to read the locations. The first one will be at the Fire Station 16, 121 Lake Murray Boulevard, Greenview Park, 2700 David Street, Hyatt Park where we are today, 950 Jackson Avenue, Noma Gardens which is located at 2714 River Drive Marshall Park located at 2905 Lincoln Street and Riverfront Park 300 Laurel Street and you can bring your yard debris, your bulky items and any unwanted materials so I am going to get all of the things that I have that I need to get rid of. This is a great opportunity. I'm hoping that everyone will join us in the effort. Thank you. Thank you may recommend. Good morning I'm Gretchen Baron from Richland County Council District 7 and this is exciting for several reasons for me and that is number one. When I came on the council one of the things that one of the very first things that I did was start district-wide cleanups and as we have district-wide cleanups what we found is that it became as Councilwoman Herbert very contagious because we started in one part of the district and then we got the phone calls where other parts of the district wanted to be served and as they wanted to be served then we definitely what we wanted to do was make sure that it was organized so I'm excited to note that the city has taken this initiative and the county I can only speak for District 7 but we will start our cleanups back in May where we will partner with Palmetto Pride to continue to make sure that the resources are out there I don't want to steal CIU's thunder but you know as one of the partnerships that we have that I'm most proud of is that one of with CIU and the Ram serve day and you know last year it was very exciting to gather there in the chapel and as we gathered there in the chapel with students from all over the Midlands what we saw was that it didn't matter what school you went to I love HBCU, Benedict, yelling out B-C-B-C and CIU students yelling back you know you know and it was I mean it was a great thing where we saw the collaboration from school to school from county to city we had you know the sheriff's department was represented the city was represented and now as we embark upon this once again we're going to rally together to make sure that we keep Columbia clean he's the mayor loves to say the capital city I say the capital county and we are and we're the home of the the greatest basketball team and you know the Game Cots and if people are going to come here they're going to come here because of our Game Cots when they come here we want them to see clean streets we want to we want them to see you know clean alleyways when they walk through downtown and so I want to encourage everyone if you've not signed up to participate in RamServe do so because it's going to take each one of us to keep our community clean and we know that you know clean communities mean that the crime is down it means that housing the housing market flourishes economic development comes and so when we look at that let's get involved because as we get involved we are now better together because when we work together it doesn't matter who gets the credit as long as the job gets done thank you good morning good morning I'm Dom like president of the Columbia Council of Neighborhoods we appreciate the invitation from city leaders to participate in this press conference by encouraging our recognized neighborhoods and community organizations to get involved during Columbia cleanup campaign over the next month our organization's mission is to serve as a community based umbrella organization to coordinate the activities of Columbia's diverse neighborhoods and to foster communications and cooperation at all levels within the city we foster a sense of community and assist each other by providing a form where member organizations can bring specific concerns for discussion and seek help for issues they may be having in their communities like most nonprofit organizations the CCN has had our funding challenges over the last few years but given the importance of this program and the mayor's vision for Columbia we would like to offer a financial incentive to our CCN certified communities and neighborhoods I am pleased to announce that CCN will be providing four $100 grants one within each council district to who participates in the Columbia cleanup the winners will be selected via a drawing by the respective council member at the May 2nd city council meeting you know make sure you get your hair done you know bring the good she's taking donations okay winners will be selected by drawing from those who participated submission will be via the CCN website to be eligible for the grant entry you must be a CCN certified neighborhood or community organization if you haven't recertified yet you still have time and you may do so on our website our website is www.columbiacouncilofneighborhoods.com and the winning community organizations after they are secretly selected they will be announced at the May 2nd council meeting so let the cleanup begin good morning my name is Rick and I'm the interim president at Columbia International University and I want to thank Mayor Daniel Rickenman and council members that are here today for allowing us to participate and help lead the charge in this effort with Ramserve on our campus James McCall, David Finkley, Reese and Julia Sorley who have helped lead us and push us off our campus and serving our community I want to thank them. CIU Columbia International University has been educating students from a biblical world view for 100 years this is our 100th year and in continuing who we are and what we want to be known for we want to continue to push our students to work in the community and so we see this as an exciting opportunity to extend our 100th celebration beyond our campus and to help serve the Columbia community. CIU has always had a desire to serve its community and although it's looked different over the years it has always had the same mission and that is to love and serve Columbia, Richland County and the Midlands as a whole and so what we want to do if we had a theme that we could put to this is to put our words into action that's what we want to not just say it but let's do it and so we've partnered with a number of schools Benedict College and Katrina Pitts who's here today Columbia College and Chanel Singletary, Allen University Richland One and Ben Lipin, Tony Fajardo there so thankful for all these schools that have come in and all the organizations that are going to be serving in this capacity throughout this day and we're going to be serving at least 50 different sites and that takes a lot of organization and a lot of work to make that happen but community block cleanup, building a ramp with home works, the executive director Joe Huggins is helping us with that project, Project Hope with the Richland County Sheriff's Office, the Sheriff Lot so thankful for that opportunity, Greenview Elementary Community Garden Victory Ranch, Reconciliation Ministries which is that first church of the Nazarene on St. Andrews and their pastor there Eric Nehaas and so thankful for that opportunity and also represented today as the Salvation Army and the project here that they're going to be serving with us as well, Salvation Army of the Midlands so thankful for that so thank you to everybody for your participation, for the opportunity we have to make our community better and cleaning it up and making it look like we want it to look throughout this not just now but going forward so thank you everyone, thank you Mr. Mayor. I'd like to take a minute to ask Sheriff Lot if he would like to come up, say a few words This morning the mayor and I attended a pastor's prayer breakfast where they prayed over Columbia a lot of prayer, this is prayer in action, this is God's work, all of us going out and making sure that our city is clean and our county is clean, the students from CIU and other colleges too this is their way of giving back to the community so I believe in the power of prayer but we're seeing prayer in action today so I'm just grateful that the Sheriff's Department is part of this that we're able to go out with these young people with our community and go help our senior citizens, we do it with our Project Hope, help our precious elderly, last year was tremendous effort by RamServe this year's continuing to be that way so again this is a great day and Columbia South Carolina because we're all here as a team and when you have a team TEAM together everyone accomplishes more that's what we're doing so thank you. Good morning I'm Ebony Gatson the executive director for Keep the Midlands Beautiful and I am thrilled to be here this morning on behalf of our organization, we have worked very closely with both the city of Columbia and Richland County since we reformed over 30 years ago and it's great to see the collective effort and all the change that can take place when we team up and we work together as many of you may know some may not we are known as the litter people so if you see folks with the reflective vest and the litter grabbers that are out there we have about 6,000 volunteers that we support every year and we are just extremely excited to be able to support this initiative speaking to Mayor Rick and then last year and even having him join forces with us last Earth Day it was just tremendous and seeing how now we're at this place where we have city wide and county wide efforts where we can get together and join forces so there's no shortage of ways for you to participate if you're not a resident of the city then you are either employed or you play and enjoy all that this wonderful city has to offer so please continue to spread the message and spread the word about all that is taking place and that all we can do and John didn't mention it but keep the Midlands beautiful we'll be offering a matching grant for their initiatives for all the district wide cleanups and we know the need is there and we truly exist to simply serve the community so there's no demographic that we have or someone that feels like they're not a part of what we offer and we're just really thrilled to be here today and we look forward to working with each and every one of you. So this is what collaboration looks like people coming together I'll be remiss if I didn't thank Major Roberts and Captain Blair and David Hatcher the head of our code enforcement that are here today taking part of but when you have the county the city universities and colleges community leaders and everybody coming together that's what collaboration looks like and that's how we're going to continue to succeed here in the Midlands it is our time as we like to say all the time it is time for the Midlands to have the investment and the opportunities that other parts of our state have the same time I want to make sure is that we move forward in the cleanup and we start doing this in the neighborhood that people understand that we're doing other efforts as well as lobbying the state house to get increased fines for litter folks we see a lot of areas where people decide they want to dump on a weekly basis and some of our more challenged neighborhoods especially people take advantage of empty lots and so forth as we continue to move to remove to condemn houses and build new homes we're going to continue to do things like green space public art but also set up ways that we can capture and catch some of these folks that are deciding they're going to dump our tires and owe things into our neighborhoods and trash them we're not going to put up with that but we're also investing in using technology and I want to take the opportunity here to talk about a pilot program that the city is embarking on called City Detect it will use AI that will be attached to our garbage trucks that allow us to scan is because the garbage trucks as you know the only trucks that go through every street and every neighborhood and every part of the 492 miles that we have here in the city of Columbia and it will give us a picture real time picture of what properties look like where trash is being dumped code enforcement quality of if people are abusing front parking and their yards if places are trash abandoned cars and really helping us stay ahead so that we can work with those folks and make sure that our communities stay clean safe inviting and livable for all sections of Columbia so we're really excited about this it can identify everything from litter to overgrads cars and yards damage structure blight and it will really help us become more efficient and what we're doing but also allow us to know too where empty lots where there are opportunities that we can encourage growth cities that are already doing a pilot program Greenville Springfield Illinois in Tuscaloosa Alabama so we're one of five cities that will be part of this test program but this is just one thing that we're doing to add to it is take advantage of technology to improve the quality of service here in Columbia