By: Mayor Eileen Bulan
This week begins all the Spring activities for Vermilion. The first Third Thursday of the year is this evening at 6:30 PM. Come downtown and enjoy all the music in front of the stores.
This coming Saturday, May 20 Is Pride Day in Vermilion and all over Lorain County. Vermilion has been celebrating Pride Day since its inception in 1995. There used to be an organization in Lorain County called Lorain County 2020 headed by Fran Bostwick, a Vermilion resident at the time. She began with this idea to have one day set aside to clean up Lorain County. In Vermilion, we liked this idea and formed a committee consisting of Elizabeth Sheehe who was the Mayor in 1995, Steve Gfell the owner of Domino’s Pizza in Vermilion, the late Maureen Coe of the Vermilion Chamber of Commerce, the late Steve Demou representing the Vermilion Lions Club and myself. We worked hard to get this clean-up event started and from its inception, has been a great success.
This Saturday, it kicks off once again at 8:30 AM with the Vermilion Lions Club serving coffee, juice and donuts for all who volunteer. They have been there every year since its inception. Many civic organizations, businesses, youth groups and individuals have volunteered every year for this event. Lorain County Solid Waste District is providing gloves, t-shirts, water and trash bags for this year’s Pride Day event.
It is not too late to volunteer, please call the Mayor’s office at 204-2402 or e-mail to annemaiden@vermilion.net for an assignment. Please bring rakes, shovels or hand tools if you have them available. If you need assistance, or know of someone that does, please call our office so that we know who needs help.
In the last few years, Pride Day in Vermilion has become so much more. Main Street Vermilion in Bloom has helped make our projects grow and develop in recent years. It has become more than just a clean-up day. It has become several weeks of people volunteering, planting and hanging our flowers, cleaning out our planting beds, cleaning beaches and sprucing up all the entrances and parks in our city.
Once again, Republic Services will be providing a dumpster at our Service Center, 5335 Devon Drive from 9 until 12 noon. If you have items you need to dispose of, this is the time to bring them to the dumpster at the Service Center.
Through our Lorain County Recycling Grant, we are able to provide shredding services for use by the public from 9 until noon at Victory Park. Items to be shredded, such as sensitive documents should be brought in brown bags as cardboard boxes cannot be accepted. The truck shreds over 300 pounds of paper in six minutes. Participants can view their material in the container and watch as they are deposited into the hopper.
On Monday, May 29, we will be celebrating Memorial Day. Join us downtown for the annual parade which begins at 10:30 AM. The Memorial Day Program will begin at 11 AM at the gazebo in Victory Park.
Please join us in all these activities this month. Vermilion is very blessed to have so many volunteers always willing to give of their and talent for our community. This is what Vermilion is all about and we truly are the “Greatest Town on a Great Lake”.
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