Cleaning up in Madison Valley

McGilvra Elementary students sprayed, scraped and pulled together on East Madison Street for the annual Madison Valley Spring Clean on May 12.

“We’ve all been out here every year since they’ve been in kindergarten and we learned about it,” said Phoebe Anderson, co-president of the McGilvra PTA.

She was joined by fellow co-president Katherine Fitzpatrick, and their children, Arlo Anderson, and Zola and Henry Lowrey. Together they removed stickers from signs and a signal box at the triangle island at 28th Avenue East. Then they painted the box.

The Madison Valley Spring Clean is an event hosted by the local merchants association, which provides cleaning supplies, plus coffee and donuts.

Yumi Pick with the PTA said she tried to get the word out to as many McGilvra families as she could about the cleanup. Luckily, she said, there wasn’t too much to do.

“When we first started, it was a mess,” said Lindy Wishard of the first Madison Valley Spring Clean five years ago.

Wishard is the past organizer with the Madison Valley Merchants Association, and turned that responsibility over this year to Devon Magnusson, office manager at Move Mend.

“She helped me immensely,” Magnusson said.

Each year the number of projects have shrank, Wishard said, and a professional landscape crew is also hired on to weed tree wells, clear out grass from cracks, etc.

The number of volunteers had reached 20 by 11 a.m.

“It’s funny,” she said. “People seem pretty game to do anything.”