Clean & And Beautiful: New Mexico True

By Cheyenne Stedman

We love our little city of Portales, so why not do our part in keeping it clean and beautiful?

The City of Portales is doing their part by starting fun projects for the citizens of Portales to take part in year-round. Jodi Diaz, married mother of four boys and head of the Rec. Center and youth sports, just recently took over the NM True Clean and Beautiful grant earlier this fall.

We’ve all found Covid to be the biggest challenge this year, Jodi feels the same way as the city had to cancel recurring clean-up events that have gone on for years.

However, in just the short time she’s been taking on the grant, she’s had such a positive impact from learning about all of the opportunities that can come from the Clean and Beautiful project and being able to work within the community.

The grant is state funded and any municipality is eligible to apply for it. This grant is to promote and encourage the communities of New Mexico to keep themselves beautiful. Various parts of the Clean and Beautiful grant are trash pickup, recycling, landscaping, planting trees, compost stations, etc. The community garden at James Elementary School is also part of the Clean and Beautiful grant and it is used to educate students on the whole process of gardening and taking care of the land. There are new projects in the works to continue making our city a better place such as graffiti eradication and putting new trash and recycle bins at every park.

Just recently, the city hall arranged a project for the cleanest yard in the City of Portales. Jodi asked council members to nominate the property in their ward that promotes the Clean and Beautiful project by keeping their yard clean and taking pride in their property and the area around it. Two council members nominated four yards in total for the month of June with awards included, The Roosevelt Review is adding a $25.00 Visa gift card to each of the awards as well. The main goal of this is to encourage more members of the community to keep their yards looking clean and beautiful. To stay updated with city projects, you can find information on Facebook and hear it on the Radio Spot with Doc & Kevin every other Wednesday morning, and as always, at our City Hall. We’re hoping to see more activities like this in the future, and until then, make sure to do your part to keep our city clean and beautiful.