Editor, The Smithfield Times:

My husband and I moved to Smithfield in November 2021. We lived in Virginia Beach all our life and decided to make Isle of Wight our “golden years” home. We love the small-town atmosphere with all the mom-and-pop shops. 

There is but one thing that we cannot understand or seem to find out who we need to see about this, and that is the amount of litter and trash alongside the roads. Nike Park, Titus, Reynolds, Smith’s Neck, Route 10, all of these roads are just vastly littered with trash. I see people picking up trash along Battery Park in the Smithfield town limits, but it always stops there. 

I have called the county and they tell me 1.) to call DMV,  2.) to adopt a highway, 3.) that they do not have funding for it, 4.) that COVID-10 restrictions will not allow it. All of these are bogus. Then I read in The Smithfield Times that the county supervisors want to give themselves a raise and that they are raising the personal property tax rate. But they can’t pick up the litter?  

In The Smithfield Times last week was an article (“Visitors are big business in Isle of Wight and Surry counties”) about tourism and how it helps the economy here. People are not going to visit this area more than once because once they see all the litter on the road, it does not make them want to come back to visit. We have friends who come to visit us from Virginia Beach and that is the first thing they say to us: “Why is there so much litter and trash on the side of the road? It is such a beautiful area and the site of all the litter and trash just destroys it.”  

I ask that someone step up and make us proud of this area and get this litter and trash picked up.

 

Ginger Pickett

Smithfield