The citizens of Carrollton really did a wonderful job diverting recyclables for Texas Recycles Day. With the help of Keep Carrollton Beautiful, more than 200 volunteers got a cute t-shirt, had fun serving the community on a beautiful day and ate a lot of pizza. And with the help of eight recycling vendors and the City, Carrollton diverted 30,000 pounds of recyclables from the landfill.

The Carrollton Evening Lions Club collected eyeglasses and reusable medical equipment. ?Close Knit? (Senior Center) collected knitting yarn. Dallas Computer Parts collected electronics and with the help of the City of Carrollton, computer monitors. Firestone on Old Denton Road collected car tires and car batteries. Keep Carrollton Beautiful collected cell phones and lap tops. PTA Council ?Clothes Closet? collected gently used clothing and shoes. And Triple A Recycling collected scrap metal and appliances.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful educates about environmental issues including the 4R?s and reached a lot of people on Texas Recycles Day. They reduced our landfill tipping fees. They reused lots of clothes. They recycled what couldn?t be reused. And they encouraged everyone to rebuy recycled material goods by selling their reusable grocery bags.

Of course, Keep Carrollton Beautiful couldn?t do it without the support of great in-kind donors like Newman Smith High School, Domino?s Pizza, Tom Thumb, Kroger and Albertsons. Or without the support of their sponsors like Carrollton Evening Lions Club and Trinity Medical Center.

If you?d like to help close the loop, go to www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org and buy your own reusable grocery bags. The bags are made from recycled material, very strong and washable. They work better than plastic bags because they hold more. The reusable grocery bags are green and have Keep Carrollton Beautiful?s logo on them. When you use them, everyone will see that you are part of the solution.

?It?s our intention to teach everyone about reduce, reuse, recycle, rebuy. Our reusable grocery bags are great symbols of stepping forward to support that cause,? said Sharon Goddard. ?I personally would like to make plastic bags obsolete in Carrollton.?

Well, we didn’t get to clean the river last fall due to rushing, dangerous water but we’re on for this year. This will be our third participation (forth year trying) in the regional event. All those communities along the Trinity River will be cleaning also.

We are partnering with Dallas Down River and the Carrollton Evening Lions Club to provide this fun way to clean the river, educate the participants about stormwater pollution and canoe safety and get to know the river in canoes.

Lots of groups are getting the bug ? they want their community to be beautiful and where it isn?t – they just go to work. Over the weekend, Team-Me USA got an energetic group together to clean the greenbelt close to Frankford Road and Josey Lane.

Team-Me USA is a non-profit begun by Tony Owens to help teens prepare for responsible adulthood and build the skills they need to negotiate a rapidly changing society. Just begun in January, their mission is a good one: ?to build character and to help teens develop the leadership skills that greatly affect their ability to make positive decisions and avoid the pitfalls that could place them at risk.?

A community cleanup is a perfect way to take responsibility for where you live while having a huge impact. Bobby Brady, Parks Dept. for the City of Carrollton, directed the group to this greenbelt because it?s very hard for the City staff to keep up with all the maintenance; especially with all the rain we had this spring.

Partnering with Keep Carrollton Beautiful was also a great decision because it netted them trash bags, surgical gloves and pickers. ?Groups like this are perfect examples of what it means to take responsibility in your own community. What we found was that the City was doing a great job in the greenbelt but the streets could use some help. I hope we can find groups and companies to adopt all the streets with our Adopt-A-Spot program,? said Sharon Goddard, Keep Carrollton Beautiful.

They even separated the recycling from the trash they collected. ?We couldn?t believe that people would use the trails in the beautiful greenbelt for walking or jogging or picnicking and then LEAVE their water bottle!? Many, many people did!

To contact Team-Me USA, go to www.Team-MeUSA.com and find out about their other great programs for teens. To find out about the up coming Trinity River Trash Bash and Texas Recycles Day hosted by Keep Carrollton Beautiful, go to www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org. Maybe people will learn to PICK UP THEIR OWN TRASH.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful has brought a national litter reduction campaign to Carrollton, giving local businesses, civic organizations and other groups the opportunity to make an impact on the cleanliness and appearance of our community ? one ?spot? at a time. By accepting the responsibility and leadership of the adopted “spot”, the group is not only increasing awareness of litter issues and the impact of beautification efforts, but is also publicly demonstrating a positive behavior of local pride and ownership of Carrollton.

? Adopt-A-Spot is really the metropolitan version of the Texas Department of Transportation?s Adopt-A-Highway, but we really can?t have volunteers cleaning the highways around here. It?s much too dangerous,? said Sharon Goddard, Founder and Executive Director of Keep Carrollton Beautiful.

The yearly commitment is to clean your ?spot? once a quarter, but many of those who are already signed up clean more often. Their ?spot? is a great source of pride and the cleanups serve as great team-building events. Your company or group gets two street signs, supplies and lots of support from Keep Carrollton Beautiful.

Although you can adopt on most streets, the City of Carrollton has identified ten locations that could use some additional tender loving care. These greenbelt sites are listed on www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org and come with more rustic signs, also located on major thoroughfares.

City Manager, Leonard Martin says, ?Most of the services provided by the city contribute in some way to the overall quality of life and sustainability of the community. But we need help. If more of our 5,200 businesses and organizations were involved in community service projects, everyone would benefit. Becoming a community partner means contributing in some way to the revitalization of our environment and community spirit.?

Keep Carrollton Beautiful is bringing thousands of volunteers together and making our community a more beautiful place to work and live. Join them to claim your ?spot? or go to www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org for the Forms required. Watch for their next events: Trinity River Trash Bash on October 13th and Texas Recycles Day on November 10th.

Even in the pouring rain, Keep Carrollton Beautiful?s ?Bus Tour? came off without a hitch. Last Tuesday, Brad Mink the Economic Development Director for Carrollton, informed 22 citizens during a tour he set up expressly for Keep Carrollton Beautiful participants. Mr. Mink wants to get the word out about what Carrollton is planning for its future, so he?d be happy to give a presentation for your group too.

Peter Braster, Carrollton?s Transit Oriented Development Officer, joined them to provide up-to-the minute information about the DART light rail coming through Carrollton. “I commend Carrollton for planning for future growth and development – planning not reacting,” said Bob Maguire, Keep Carrollton Beautiful participant.

All the participants found out about our many corporate citizens – how they came to Carrollton and what they do. As one participant put it – “Where else can you find Barney, Sam Moon, Chrysler and Mary Kay in one location?”

Mr. Mink was very interested in everyone understanding who contributes to the tax base in our city. Of course without that base, all the services that residents enjoy would not be possible.

The driving rain didn?t keep them from seeing the upgrades that the City of Carrollton has made and are making on some of the older streets and parkways. Mr. Mink explained the changes in building requirements that create a more welcoming and sustainable appearance. Richard Scott, a Keep Carrollton Beautiful volunteer said, ?Until one hears about the past, current, and future developments in Carrollton, it is easy to undervalue what we have.? Everyone had plenty of opportunity to ask questions about what they thought was important.

Underlying everything that was said was the history of how we got where we are in the first place – some of the mistakes that were made in planning and in trusting people who had only their own best interests at heart, instead of the city as a whole. Paul Heller was very appreciative of the Bus Tour. He said, ?It was a great way to learn about all the economic forces, both business and residential, that have shaped the past and will shape the future of Carrollton.”

Sharon Goddard, Executive Director of Keep Carrollton Beautiful, summed up the tour by saying, ?Everyone came away with a sense that we are moving TOGETHER toward a very bright future – as long as we follow all the plans that have been agreed upon for the DART light rail and Transit Oriented Development. Embracing this change will increase property values, improve regional air quality, and bring in new businesses and residents.?

Most of the people were new to Keep Carrollton Beautiful, so they were also given information about Texas Recycles Day that?s coming up on November 10th. To find out how to participate in Texas Recycles Day or how you can get involved in Keep Carrollton Beautiful, go to www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org.

We had some great volunteers	Kenty Elementary	Multi-Cultural Night

Keep Carrollton Beautiful?s Great American Cleanup was a smashing success ? counting only the reported events, Adopt-A-Spot, HOA and school cleanups ? they collected almost 16,000 pounds of trash and debris and recycled 4,100 pounds of newspaper and drink containers! During the Great American Cleanup, 1013 volunteers spent 4669 hours cleaning Carrollton ? volunteers really make a difference!

More than 500 participants at Kent Elementary?s Earth Day celebration stated the roll. Their PTA and Keep Carrollton Beautiful won State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Award grant to fund planting 600 flowers and a tree. Keep Carrollton Beautiful gave their contest winners t-shirts and prizes for their efforts.

The Great American Cleanup event netted 4000 pounds of litter and debris collected by 250 volunteers. The volunteers all received praise, t-shirts and lunch. A good morning spent working in the community for a great cause!

Adopt-A-Spot, Home Owners? Associations and other schools held cleanups as well. Kent Elementary even had a Multi-Cultural Night to learn about different cultures, geography and environmental issues affecting other countries.

Intuit Inc. and Exponent HR brought Keep Carrollton Beautiful?s Great American Cleanup to a dramatic close by collecting 1600 gushy pounds of trash out of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River and surrounding McInnish Park. Intuit?s ?We Care and Give Back? team have been partnering with Keep Carrollton Beautiful to clean the river for four years now. ?These guys are so enthusiastic, we love helping them. And they spent 238 hours helping Carrollton. We really appreciate them,? said Sharon Goddard, founder of Keep Carrollton Beautiful.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful created a venue for the City of Carrollton to make their ?Sustainable Carrollton? presentation last week. Those interested citizens in attendance came away with all the facts on what the City has come through and what is planned for the future.

Brad Mink, Director of Economic Development Director, joined the City of Carrollton in 1986 and currently oversees a small staff of 1 full-time employee. Mr. Mink has been involved in bringing in excess of $300 million in new business/economic development to the City of Carrollton. Peter Braster, Carrollton?s first Transit Oriented Development Manager, will be responsible for the development and redevelopment of Carrollton immediately around the Light Rail Transit Stations and manage the use of the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful participants learned a lot about where our City has been and where it?s going: They found out who has purchased Furneaux Creek shopping center; they found out that Beltline lowering isn?t in stone yet; they got all the details on DART ? where it?s going and what?s going to be around it including trails; they also found out what is going to happen to the grain towers soon; what is going to happen to the corrugated steel buildings near Old Downtown; and they got to see the new TOD signage to brand each plaza.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful intends to create a closer community in Carrollton and this presentation really helped to get the participants up to date.

The school district is happy, Halliburton is happy and Keep Carrollton Beautiful is definitely happy. They all did a great thing on Saturday and the Outdoor Learning Center is better for it.
Keep Carrollton Beautiful paired a CFBISD bench building project with a team of hardworking volunteers from Halliburton to install six benches at the Native Plant Garden they helped to create last spring. The Science Resource teacher, Mark Schallhorn and Bill Shipp, a district volunteer, made the benches using materials left from the fence-building project. ?So it would match,? says Mark.
Braving the very cold wind Saturday morning, Keep Carrollton Beautiful volunteers from Halliburton installed the benches ? setting them and trail timbers and mulch. Now the kids can study, sketch and contemplate nature while sitting along the trail. ?Our Halliburton volunteers always come out with a can-do attitude. They have helped us on several projects,? said Sharon Goddard, founder and executive director of Keep Carrollton Beautiful. The new Native Plant Garden gives the OLC a new sense of place. See pictures at the Change Gallery. Rick?s Famous Bar-B-Que treated the volunteers to wonderful barbequed beef, sausage and turkey and all the trimmings. They even feasted on warm peach cobbler and the warm part was very much appreciated! Certainly a luscious way to end a productive Saturday morning.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful was wrought out of a strong passion for the environment and a third-generation desire to serve the community of Carrollton. While networking at an EPA Environmental Educator’s Roundtable, Sharon Goddard made the decision to create an affiliate of Keep Texas Beautiful. The rest is the history of Keep Carrollton Beautiful.

In an attempt to partner with the City of Carrollton, Sharon proposed Keep Carrollton Beautiful to Leonard Martin, the City Manager in February of 2004. Upon receiving a cool reception but some encouragement to “see what you can do in two years”, she calmly presented the photos of 10 commercial dump sites within the city limits. Mr. Martin was more interested in these, being sure she didn’t leave without giving him the offending addresses.

Since the City didn’t want the program, Sharon began calling everyone with whom she had ever spoken in Carrollton, beginning with the Elm Fork Nature Preserve coordinator, Beth Acosta. Sharon had already made a proposal to Beth for “I Am Earth’s Friend” classes for preschoolers to be given at the recreation centers and knew she was in charge of many of the City environmental events. With another reserved reception under her belt, she called more people whom she knew from some past participation and people who others recommended that she call. These many, many phone and personal conversations netted much more interest and enthusiasm.

The original Board of Directors for Keep Carrollton Beautiful immerged from these conversations. Doug Tobe, a CPA/MBA who used to be Sharon’s son’s Scout Master; Mark Schallhorn, the director of the CFBISD Outdoor Learning Center; Diana Albrecht, the wife of The Rotary Club’s president; and Jeff Weaver, the manager of the Ebby Halliday office in Carrollton. With actual people for the board, Keep Carrollton Beautiful was well on its way.

All the Keep Texas Beautiful affiliate coordinators were very supportive, especially Lecrecia Boyd from Keep Lewisville Beautiful who invited Keep Carrollton Beautiful to participate in the March 25, 2004 kick-off of the paper recycling program for the LISD (which includes 7 Carrollton schools). The recycling program was a great success and is being perfected, then we will bring it to CFBISD.

Our first Board Meeting on March 30, 2004 was really a dinner party for some complete strangers! It was clear from the first meeting that these individuals were also interested in helping the community, willing to give of their time to make Keep Carrollton Beautiful triumphant and a very unified group. We created our mission statement “To empower Carrollton to enhance our community environment” and approved our By Laws at that first meeting with almost everyone there undertaking an executive title.

The first year really took off as we facilitated events and forged partnerships.

EVENTS:
In April of 2004, for our three Great American Cleanup events, we partnered with Intuit and had 35 volunteers who spent over 250 hours cleaning the Trinity River collecting 2340 pounds of gushy, yucky trash; then we discovered that the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts were the best kind of volunteers when 41 Scouts collected 440 pounds of trash in the pouring rain; and we also partnered with ST Microelectronics and had 7 volunteers collect 400 pounds of trash from the creek behind Creekview High School.

On September 16, 2004, we revitalize the abandoned Marie Huie Outdoor Learning Center with Fuji Photo Film U.S.A. and 22 volunteers donated and planted two new raised butterfly gardens for the school and neighborhood kids to study.

In October of 2004, we facilitated Environmental Awareness Classes discussing Carrollton ‘Scaping; Backyard Water Gardens; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rebuy; and Your Organic Yard with eleven presenters, and also organized Make A Difference Day by partnering with The Civic League, Senior Adult Services, Mosaic, Halliburton and the Boy Scouts to refurbish the exteriors of four homes owned by citizens who could not do their own work (60 volunteers spent 469 hours in preparation and execution of our projects).

On November 13, 2004, we held our first Texas Recycles Day partnering with 9 recycling vendors and all four Carrollton high schools, diverting 7,500 pounds of recyclables from the landfill.

PARTNERSHIPS:
In only one year, we partnered with 77 businesses, 248 individuals, 4 civic organizations, 8 other non-profits, 6 other Keep Texas Beautiful affiliates and 7 City departments to unify Carrollton amassing 3,600 hours of volunteer labor.

Over the summer of 2004, we started planning for the Great American Cleanup 2005 in partnership with Tejas and Cross Timbers Councils of the Girl Scouts U.S.A. and the Circle Ten North District Boy Scouts.

During the school year, we partnered with Carrollton/Farmers Branch Independent School District administration to coordinate Earth Day with the science teachers, create Clean Sweep for Schools with the principals and facilitate Texas Recycles Day with community service groups from all four high schools.

On September 7, 2004, Sharon persuaded the Carrollton City Council to give Keep Carrollton Beautiful a $5,000 Community Service Assistance Grant.

In December of 2004, we kicked-off our “Yard of the Month” award program by presenting our sign and certificate to the Rojas family.

As our work progressed, there was ongoing preparation for our non-profit status with the IRS and in August after many hours of revision by Doug Tobe and Sharon, we received our 501(c)(3) standing. Sharon recruited 10 sponsors and 10 business, family and individual members, raising $7,681 in cash and $10,875 in-kind donations. She wrote 8 grants, created newsletters for each season and awarded “Volunteer of the Season” awards.

We lost one Board Members (Diana) and added two new; Julie Poe, an old friend of Sharon’s, Mia Simmons, who is active in the gardening and environmental communities, and then added and lost Lela Khan, a community tree and herb specialist who continues to volunteer for us.

We brought our year to a close with a warm and cheerful Christmas Board Meeting held at the Republic Title building awarding our “Volunteer of the Year” award to Doug Tobe. We had accomplished much in just one year and we deserved to celebrate!