Monday’s city council meeting in Valley Grande was a quick one, lasting just 30 minutes, but it wasn’t short on discussions of change coming to the city.

During the meeting, Mayor Wayne Labbe and members of the council announced they would begin taking bids for someone to help clean trash from the city’s busiest streets.

“We just have so much trash in this town, especially on the roads that are traveled by more than just our citizens,” Labbe said. “We are trying to get bids on what it would cost to have someone pickup the trash on these roads every six or eight weeks.”

Currently, the city advertises for volunteers to help clear trash from the streets and ditches once every six months, and Labbe said that plan is not enough to keep up with the increased rubbish.

“We do need some help, and we feel that having someone out here every six or eight weeks will really help with this problem,” Labbe said.

It was also announced that the assistant to the city clerk had taken a job elsewhere recently, meaning city clerk Janet Frasier is alone in the office at the moment, which Labbe said is too much work for one person to handle.

“We have posted that job, and we are going through resumes right now,” Labbe said. “When you have a two people office, and you lose 50 percent of that you kind of tighten up.”

Council members also approved money to put toward updating the city’s emergency warning sirens, something Labbe said was needed.

“We are having a little trouble with the sirens, and we have to update some of our software and equipment or they won’t be functional in the next few months,” Labbe said. “When you look at the devastation this week out in the Midwest, it’s important to give your citizens as much warning as possible. These sirens have proven themselves invaluable in the past, and we take care of these.”

Labbe said the $1,000 council had allocated to toward the improvements to the three sirens would help keep the city’s citizens safe.

“We can’t do anything about the weather, but we need to make our citizens as aware as soon as we can,” Labbe said.