GOOD HOPE — Monday’s meeting was the first for Good Hope since COVID-19 began making an impact on the area, and Good Hope Mayor Jerry Bartlett shared some of the measures that the city has taken over the past month to keep its residents and workers safe.

In a meeting that was pushed outside due to social distancing measures, Bartlett said the city’s workers have been working to maintain their distance while they go about their daily work. 

“We just try to keep everybody safe, but they’ve been keeping all of our mowing done, and we’ve had several projects that we’ve done over the last two or three weeks pertaining to culverts and roads and ditches,” he said.

He said some of those projects include the completion of a turn lane at Beech Grove Road and County Road 437, asphalt work on Rushing Drive and the replacement of an inlet pipe and installation of guide poles on White Oak Circle. 

The city also recently replaced a culvert on Megan Lane that had been seeing problems, Bartlett said. 

There is a trailer park on Calvert Road right next to its intersection with Megan Lane, and trucks that were turning there had crushed both sides of the pipe in the culvert, so workers extended the culvert by five feet on both sides and covered the pipe with concrete to make more room for trucks and add some protection, he said. 

Along with road projects, the city also had to deal with some damage from Sunday’s storms. 

Good Hope was spared the brunt of the blow from the storms, but there were trees knocked down around the city and some flash flooding in some areas, Bartlett said. 

He said city workers were out until after 2 a.m. cleaning up trees and checking on roads, and after Monday morning saw a few more reports of fallen trees, they went back out again to clean up and make sure culverts and ditches were clear of debris.

Whether workers are out cleaning up after a storm like Sunday night, doing their daily mowing or road work or picking up trash around the city, Good Hope’s workers are doing a good job to keep working while still saying safe from COVID-19, Bartlett said. 

“I’m real pleased with the way the city looks,” he said. “When you drive through, you can tell that these guys are working hard, and we’re real proud of them.”