Although the city came together in early March to clean up highways and remove litter, Valley Grande is in need of another citywide cleanup day as trash has begun to accumulate again.

During their regular city council meeting, Valley Grande Mayor Wayne Labbe suggested arranging another cleanup day to make the city more “simply beautiful.”

“With the amount of open land we have in Valley Grande, a lot of times it’s easy for people to throw trash out their car windows,” Labbe explained. “So we’re looking to get residents out here again to just pick up the raids, make it cleaner.”

Usually, the city hosts two cleanup days a year. However, Labbe said due to a high amount of trash along Alabama Highway 22, it’s time to schedule another day to eliminate trash throughout the city’s busiest highway.

“It’s not just Valley Grande traffic, it’s traffic from out of state — it’s just a busy highway,” he said.

For the past year, the state has mowed grass along the highway, which Labbe said exposes more trash — creating an eyesore. Ultimately, he said the city would like to employ organizations like Teen Challenge to pick up trash along the highway.

“That way, we would be helping out a good cause and everyone would benefit from it,” he said. “They already do a lot for Valley Grande, so I would like to see them benefit more from the city.”

After the cleanup day, which is scheduled for late September or early October, Labbe said all volunteers would be invited to have hotdogs and hamburgers fresh from the grill at the city park, located off of Highway 22.

“I really enjoy stuff like this because it gets the citizens out, and we have several who work hard to keep this city looking nice,” he said. “We’ll advertise this with the churches and try and get as many people out on a Saturday morning.”