Oregon Bay Area Beautification's (OBAB) 2024 Mid-Year Presidents Report

Greetings to our wonderful volunteers, the doers in Oregon’s Bay Area. You are all tireless in spreading OBAB’s message about making and keeping our area beautiful but you also walk the walk. Thank you for keeping your grabbers handy and picking up trash as you are on your daily walks, when you are with your kids at a playground and as you run errands. Thank you for being a voice for our public spaces at City Council and various committee meetings. And thank you especially for coming out to OBAB’s 2nd Saturday Cleanups. Many hands really do make light work.

Here is an accounting of what we have been able to accomplish in the 1st half of 2024.

· 45 Cubic yards of trash and 15.5 cubic yards of debris removed from our local parks and public spaces.

· 40 trees planted in John Topits Park.

· Approximately 40 plots at Marshfield Pioneer cemetery were spruced up.

· 564 volunteer hours at six clean up events.

We have had an average of 42 volunteers at OBAB run 2nd Saturday Clean up events for this year so far which is up by 2 from our average in 2023. OBAB’s board would like to raise that average to 50 for this year and we think we can do it with your help.

Please continue to share our message and our events. Bring a friend or family member and come give even just a half hour of your time. The more volunteers these events have, the greater the impact and the good.

I’d like to also take this chance to thank my fellow board members. Catie Loy has been tireless in helming OBAB’s PR and keeping us on financial track as Treasurer. Jennifer Meredith has spent countless hours in record keeping and organization efforts as our Secretary and Sign in person. Rich McCann has been a steadfast VP, stepping in when needed and doing many unseen and underappreciated jobs to keep us running smoothly. Andrea McCann has been our purchasing wizard; protecting our OBAB funds by finding deals for the items we need to keep on trucking. Next time you see one of these folks at our clean ups please thank them. There is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes.

We are hoping to find more people to help us with those behind-the-scenes work, sticking with the theme of ‘many hands make light work.’ If you are interested in helping out on our planning committee (.5-hour meeting commitment monthly) or on our OBAB board (2 hour meeting commitment monthly) please reach out to me or one of the above mentioned OBAB Board members.