Resident Article: Adopt-A-Block by Tom Prieto
Hopefully, most of us Maple Hill residents enjoy and take pride in having a clean neighborhood. If done on a regular basis, it wouldn’t take many volunteers or much time to keep Maple Hill clean of trash. Some trash blows into our neighborhood, some of it is accidental (such as after trash pick-up by Republic), and some is certainly intentional (such as the beer cans and liquor bottles that are regularly thrown in the weeds along the south border of Maple Hill). Are you willing to invest a small amount of time on a regular basis to help keep Maple Hill clean?
If so, choose a section of our neighborhood to regularly check for and pick up trash. You could adopt a street or a section of a street (such as Ballard Lane between Bar Harbor Drive and Marshfield Lane). You could adopt one of the common areas (such as the common area around the pool, the path through the EDB and the common areas at the ends of the path, the common area along the path from Richards Lake Road to Middlebury Lane, or one or more blocks of the common areas along the north, south, and west sides of Maple Hill).
Choose an area that fits the time you have to do this; it could be as little as 10-15 minutes a week. This would also be a great thing to get your kids involved in (you could adopt one of the common areas to keep your kids away from the roads while they are helping with this). Tell the HOA board what area you choose to adopt, and if you want, suggest a name for this project. If you are concerned about you or your kids touching the trash, in addition to gloves there are nice grabbers available on Amazon (such as the Unger Professional 36” Nifty Nabber – Reacher Grabber Tool & Trash Picker).
Even if you don’t adopt an area, please consider picking up trash when you see it. We don’t expect everyone to help with this, but even if only 10% of the 634 Maple Hill homes are willing to help, our neighborhood could be kept clean. There’s a lot of trash in our world that we can’t do much about, but we can take pride in keeping our neighborhood clean.
