'Clean and Beautiful' changes approved

PORTALES — The city hopes to be a little more “Clean and Beautiful” after councilors approved changes to the program’s 2018-2019 application at Tuesday night’s meeting.

The application for the Clean and Beautiful grant program — designed to encourage residents to keep their community clean — included three new projects.

Deputy City Clerk Veda Urioste’s first new project, a biannual “cleanest yard program,” would award a resident in each ward for having the most well-kept yard.

The winner would receive a sign recognizing their achievement, according to Urioste.

She also suggested a quarterly residential cleanup, in which the city would suggest a specific challenge for residents.

“Every quarter, we’d announce that this quarter, we’ll do a ‘clean your porch quarter,’ and then, the next quarter, we would be advertising to do ‘pick up all the trash and debris from your yard,’” she said.

Other projects that have been undertaken in years prior — the James Elementary School community garden, the “adopt-a-plot” program and two city-wide “clean-ups” — were also included in the proposal.

Mayor Ron Jackson said the “cleanest yard program” is a “great idea.”

“I think that if your neighbors start seeing cleanliness in the ward, then we can award each area instead of just one citizen,” he said.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting:

• Councilors approved a request to remove uncollectible accounts from the city’s ambulance billing accounts receivable.

Fire Chief Gary Nuckols said the unpaid balances, which total $118,281, are from ambulance calls between 2004 and 2014.

The accounts are deemed “uncollectible after four years, based on efforts to collect the account and locate the debtor,” Nuckols said.

• Councilors approved a resolution encouraging residents to conserve water, which included a campaign to reduce water use by 4 percent.

Public Works Director John DeSha said the campaign aims to encourage water conservation “in a realistic way” by providing information at Portales City Hall and encouraging a schedule for watering yards (odd numbered addresses on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and even numbered addresses on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, with no watering on Monday between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.).

“Really, what we’re asking people to do is pay attention to how they’re using the water,” he said.