By By Mayor Howard Shell
Guest Columnist
Today is Friday, three days prior to Easter. Last night I watched a tee-ball game and a game at the high-school. You can tell that spring is in the air. At both ball fields, I had the pleasure of watching parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles all enjoy getting involved with the games.
The city is involved with all of these activities. We're trying to make sure all the parks are clean, the grass is cut and the azaleas are trimmed. Our city crews have all been busy working to clean up the cemeteries and the streets in preparation for out-of-town visitors coming in to our city. We want everyone who leaves here to have a good impression of Atmore.
Easter time is typically thought of as a time of new beginnings and that's in line with our town motto – Old Friends and New Beginnings. As we've mentioned several times we are very pleased with the coming of the new Super Fred's, Arby's and Pizza Pro. Some things are leaving but that's part of the process of a new beginning.
One of the many jobs as caretaker of the city is beautification of our town. We strive hard to keep our town clean and looking good. As we continue to work hard in keeping our town clean we ask all of our citizens to help us.
As you know, we purchased land for our new industrial park last year and we're beginning to get visitors looking here. Each person in Atmore is a salesperson for our city. An example of that is one of our visitors was a consultant who walked into a business here in town and asked an employee "what do you think of your city?"
Thankfully, that employee had good things to say. But, that's the way some consultants work. They want to know the attitude of the town they visit.
We want everyone to know that we are a very patriotic town. We support our youth and our servicemen and women as evident by the outpouring of residents attaching yellow ribbons on their homes and buildings and we proudly fly our flags all over town.
I want the people of Atmore to know how fortunate we are to have so many people as interested as they are in making our town great. I have people walking into my office all the time with suggestions on improving our quality of life.
We are working hard at getting the pools and the parks ready for summer. We're very proud of our two Olympic-sized pools that are very active each year. We have an excellent summer staff that comes on board each year with lifeguards and maintenance workers all working hard to keep the pools and the ball fields maintained and ready for us to use.
All of these facilities are yours to use. We ask that you use them in a safe manner and have a fun-filled summer.
Editor's note: This is the first of a several part guest editorial series that will appear in the Sunday issue of the Atmore Advance during the remainder of April and throughout May.