Latest news with #KeepOdessaBeautiful
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Give us a chance to fix the trash issues. We will get it done.'
ODESSA, Texas (KMID/KPEJ)- The Permian Basin struggles with a waste problem because of a combination of high winds, lots of littering, and a lack of workers to help clean the area. Odessa Mayor Cal Hendrick and Keep Odessa Beautiful are working together to fix the growing trash concerns the city faces. 'Give us a chance to fix problems like the trash issue. We will get done,' said Odessa Mayor Cal Hendrick. 'I promise you, we are almost now up to full trucks. Now we've got to get staff. We have five street sweepers. Do you know how many operators we have? One. It's not paying a competitive wage.' To drive a semi-truck, the drivers must have a CDL, and many prospective employers already hold the license. 'We can't have the city paying $18 an hour while private industries are paying $30. You're never going to get anybody to work for you, right? You have to pay more, but to pay more, you have to have more money. To have more money, and it's a terrible word to say, but you're going to have to raise taxes.' Hendrick says he does not want to raise taxes to hire more people. 'I'm frustrated. Why is the state sitting on a trillion-dollar surplus and we can't afford to pay a truck driver a competitive wage, a fair wage for hard work, right?' The city of Odessa officials are working hard to keep the community clean. That is one of Mayor Hendrick's goals: to keep Odessa beautiful and clean. 'We have great leaders right now that are moving; they're supporting us and leading by example in actually showing how they can help be part of that solution and not the problem,' Claudia Ortega of Keep Odessa Beautiful said. Ortega says everyone can pitch in to help solve the problem by throwing trash away and helping pick it up. 'The best thing is to throw the trash where it belongs,' Ortega said. 'There are either trash cans or dumpsters for when you're throwing your trash in a bag; just make sure that the bag is secure. You tie it really well. So the winds will not take that trash when they're servicing either the trash cans or the dumpsters.' 'Just don't throw the trash in a place that it doesn't belong; I think it's as simple as that.' Claudia Ortega says that if our local leaders, like the mayor, councilmen, and others, help to pick up trash, then we can all help make Odessa beautiful. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Young Men's Leadership Academy takes part in cleanup
Apr. 28—Keep Odessa Beautiful hosted another of its cleanup events Monday morning. The cleanup, which involved the Young Men's Leadership Academy and Odessa Mayor Cal Hendrick, took place on West Loop 338 Service Road between 16th and 22nd street as everyone helped pick up trash in an effort to beautify Odessa. The event was designed to empower local students through leadership development, community involvement and cultural celebration. President of Keep Odessa Beautiful Sunshine Thompson said the event was about educating the community. "Educating our community on our mission is our most important part," Thompson said. "It's about reducing, reusing, recycling, and educating the community on how we can be better for our community." Another reason for the community to help pick up trash is safety. "If our community is clean, we have a beautiful and safe environment," Thompson said. "It makes things unsafe because it's blowing around, blocking, maybe causing traffic problems." Thompson estimates that about a hundred students were out helping pick up trash during the event. She talked about why it was important to have students help clean up. "Because this is our future," Thompson said. "They're the ones that are going to be our future leaders. So when they know better, they'll do better, just like we could have been doing if we would have had more education as them growing up. So this is our future. Our kids are our future to have a better future, a cleaner, safer future." Thompson said Keep Odessa Beautiful aims to do as many more of these cleanups "as humanly possible." "We've handed out vests and the bags and the gloves that they are using today," Thompson said of the role Keep Odessa Beautiful had in Monday's cleanup. "And so we brought that to the event and we provided all the materials for them." Hendrick has been involved with multiple cleanups since becoming mayor. He said the need to clean up Odessa became apparent during election season last fall when putting up signs. "One thing that struck me is that Odessa had become very, very, very unclean," Hendrick said. "There was trash bags flying on all the different mesquite trees. It became a source of irritation for me. As I stopped, everywhere to put up a sign I was picking up beer bottles, coke bottles, water bottles, Gatorade bottles, trash, bags that it became disgusting. "And so one of the themes I have when I came into being mayor, once I was elected, is that we needed to clean up Odessa." He said Monday's cleanup was a part of the effort to clean up the city. "We're helping Odessa become a better city, a cleaner city, one we can be proud of," Hendrick said. "So today is part of that overall effort. We're going to clean up Odessa."
