ADOC to help with cleanup projects

The city of Russellville is partnering with the Alabama Department of Corrections in order to tackle some much-needed cleanup projects in the downtown and highway areas, city officials said.

At Monday night’s meeting, the Russellville City Council approved a contract with the ADOC to have 10 inmates from Hamilton work on projects such as picking up litter, weed eating, and bush hogging in multiple areas around the city.

Russellville Mayor David Grissom said the city would pay $15 per inmate per day for the labor.

“We think this will be a good way for us to tackle some of these cleanup projects that we’ve been looking at for a while now,” Grissom said.

“There are several areas where there is overgrown grass and lots of litter, and we need to get that taken care of.

“There are places on the highway that need attention, but we’ll also be focusing on areas of Jackson Avenue as well as some of the other main streets in the downtown area.”

Grissom said he hoped to have many of the areas cleaned up in time for the annual Franklin County Watermelon Festival that will take place in downtown Russellville August 15-16.

“The Watermelon Festival is an event that attracts people to our city from across the North Alabama region,” Grissom said.

“We want to continue to be good hosts of this great event, and we want to leave our visitors with a good impression of the city while they are here so that they’ll want to come back in the future.”