The effort to keep Rome and Floyd County beautiful comes with what might be considered an unfortunately high level of job security. Current Keep Rome Floyd Beautiful Director Hannah Bagley expresses nearly daily frustration as she tries to figure out why people continue to discard everything from tires to fast food wrappers on the roadsides across the community. Yet, Bagley, like those before her, Mary Louise Payne, Mickie Dobbs, Mary Hardin Thornton, and Emma Wells, shares an unbridled passion for making the Greater Rome community a clean and beautiful place to live.
The effort to keep Rome and Floyd County beautiful comes with what might be considered an unfortunately high level of
job security. Current Keep Rome Floyd Beautiful Director Hannah Bagley expresses nearly daily frustration as she tries to figure out why people continue to discard everything from tires to fast food wrappers on the roadsides across the
community. Yet, Bagley, like those before her, Mary Louise Payne, Mickie Dobbs, Mary Hardin Thornton, and Emma Wells, shares an unbridled passion for making the Greater Rome community a clean and beautiful place to live.
KRFB started in 1976 as the Clean Community Commission. It didn’t take long for the organization to fall under the Keep America Beautiful umbrella, but it did take more than 20 years to change the name to Keep Rome Floyd Beautiful, which occurred in 1998. The organization was founded following a trip to Texas by then City Commissioner Martin H. “Buddy” Mitchell and Betty Peartree, chair of the Chamber of Commerce Beautification Committee. Mitchell designed the logo, which is still in use. The Chinese Yin and Yang concept inspired that to portray a balance between man and nature.
Bagley said that having an opportunity to make Rome and Floyd County a better place to live is probably the greatest aspect of her job. People ask her how she could enjoy digging through garbage. But it is not about garbage. Instead, Bagley says that bringing volunteers together to make Rome and Floyd County cleaner and the opportunity to educate people of all ages on the importance of reducing litter are the most important functions of her job. Education, community involvement, and pollution control are the three legs of the KRFB stool. All of Bagley’s programming revolves around one of those aspects.
She admits to getting discouraged when sections of the community that are the clean-up target are re-littered within a matter of days or weeks. However, the discouragement is quickly overcome when she is on a field trip with school children, their teachers, and parents in Ridge Ferry Park near her office in the Rome-Floyd ECO Center. “I have the chance to show them out in the wetlands and right here against the dock (behind the ECO Center) and say look (at all the debris against the dock) all of that floatable debris is what you drop when you’re out here having lunch at the park,” Bagley said. “Then you see the light bulb go off.”
The Keep Rome Floyd Beautiful program is led by a volunteer board of nearly 20 people, currently led by Joan Ledbetter. The volunteers who participate in weekly clean-up campaigns make up one of the largest volunteer forces in the community. In addition, the volunteers participate in community litter pick-ups, the Adopta- Mile program, special recycling and education events, and activities such as the Bring One for the Chipper, which collects live Christmas trees.
The message is getting out, and it is not unusual for volunteers to keep coming
back. For example, she said a group of Shorter University students was initially appalled by the amount and type of trash they were picking up on the side of roads. “They were mortified that they were picking up dirty diapers and then they got into it,” Bagley said. “They realized they were making a difference, and when they
got done...they realized their own bad habits. So that particular group has returned twice for other clean-ups.”
Bagley is looking forward to the day when her job can become more proactive with beautification efforts instead of reactive to the constant battles with litter. She estimates that the clean-up efforts take up 70% of her time instead of actual beautification efforts that make up the other 30%. Some of those beautification efforts include planting wildflower gardens across the county and painting murals on retaining walls and sewer overflow pipes.
The KRFB program is required to file annual reports with the Keep Georgia and Keep America Beautiful offices and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. Those reports detail the tons of garbage that are picked up annually and show exactly how many people have gotten involved in the effort to make the community a cleaner and more beautiful place.
