Cape Girardeau held its 28th annual “Friends of the Park Day” this past Saturday, where volunteers clean up and maintain parks throughout the city. Over 300 people registered for the event, but only about 100 braved the rain to help out.
Park manager Brock Davis says this event is very beneficial to Cape Girardeau.
“It used to be just a friends of the parks day where we did work projects in all the parks. But this year, City of Cape is part of a “Keep America Beautiful” campaign,” Davis said. “And we have a Keep Cape Beautiful Committee, and they partnered with us to try to do projects throughout the whole city.”
This event helps the city because it saves them a lot of effort on the small things. This allows city workers to focus on other tasks. Davis says it is a very overlooked project.
“We don’t have to spend time doing a lot of the plantings and stuff like that, and we can spend time doing major projects that are sorely needed throughout the city,” Davis said.
Davis says this is usually a fairly popular event, with upwards of 500 people volunteering on their best years. With companies such as VIP Industries and groups like the Boy Scouts all sending people to help out, the event is usually quite large. This year’s weather didn’t cooperate, but people came to help out regardless.
