ODESSA, Texas —
The City of Odessa has been celebrating their community all year long.
The celebrations have been a part of the Neighborhood Clean-Up Block Party Program.
“It's been very successful," said Darlene Mays with the City of Odessa Code Enforcement Department.
“It takes a village of us, all of us coming together and forming partnerships and coming and being on one accord and uniting and being together where we can clean up our city and make it a cleaner and healthier city.”
For the past year the department has set aside a particular area to focus on and along with code violations, invitations to a block party are delivered.
“We’ve been doing our block parties for a year now; the program was initiated in September of 2018 and we do them every quarter and one in each council district," said Mays.
The block parties aren't just to celebrate residents cleaning up their neighborhood, but also to educate residents and avoid future code violations.
“We have actually done three block parties and out of those three combined total, 64 tons which equates to a hundred and 28 thousand pounds of bulky waste, trash removed from our neighborhoods," said Mays.
After seeing the success, the City of Odessa plans to keep this program running for at least another year.
“We are looking into our pre-planning for our 2020 schedule for the council districts," said Mays.