City of Pacific volunteers chipped in last weekend, donating labor and a Saturday to help clean up their community in honor of Earth Day.

The event, which Pacific Partnerships organized in conjunction with the City’s park board, drew volunteers to collect trash, weed, clean up and otherwise beautify the City’s 13 parks and numerous trails.

“We’ve always done the parks in this,” park board member DuWayne Gratz said. “The last few years we’ve done more with vendors and stuff being out here. This year it’s just us and the City. It’s more old school, how we did it years ago.”

Volunteers gathered at the Pacific/Algona Senior Center before being divided into teams and sent out to the parks to pick up trash, weed and perform a little upkeep on the recreational spaces.

Gathered trash was then transported to a Dumpster near City Hall, where it was collected for disposal.

The event featured a contest to see who could pick up the most trash. Volunteers were treated to a free lunch after the morning’s labor.

On hand was City Engineer Jim Morgan, representing the Public Works Department.

“The parks board and the City are just here to help and provide facilities,” Gratz said. “The whole thing is really being run by (community activist) Jeanne Fancher. She’s been going gangbusters organizing all this.”

“It’s as much a community get-together as anything,” Fancher said. “More important, it’s socializing, having lunch together and building community and relationships. Hopefully, the people who had fun here will tell their friends. They may not come to Earth Day next year, but they may be more inclined to vote, become involved in the community and maybe come to a park board meeting. It’s also an opportunity for the park board to talk about parks.”