HANCEVILLE — Depending on when they drove up, visitors to Hanceville City Hall on Friday might’ve been greeted by an unexpected sight: a closed-off parking lot, a wall of orange cones, and a small army of city employees buzzing around the grounds with hedge trimmers and shears.

After recently seeing one too many city hall guests dodge their way around the overgrown shrubs and bushes that line the parking lot sidewalk, city clerk Tania Wilcox decided she’d seen enough, and got permission from the mayor to put out the call for an all-hands-on-deck “cleanup hour” during Friday’s lunch break.

In exchange for an hour of their time (and sweat), city employees received an additional hour of pay — plus the satisfaction of having a spruced-up city hall just in time to hang some outdoor Christmas decorations.

“We do some really crazy things; you never know what you’ll see when you come down here,” joked Wilcox Friday, hedge trimmers in hand. “This one was my idea, it just needed doing! We told everybody about it on Thursday morning, and here we are the next day on Friday, making it happen.”

Wilcox said she decided to take cleanup matters into her own hands after watching the shrubbery block pedestrian progress during a recent city hall visit from Alabama House Rep. Randall Shedd (R-Fairview).

“I was outside chasing a dog that had gotten loose, and he drove up,” she explained. “I was outside and walking down that way toward the dog owner with the leash, and I turned around and there was Randall Shedd, having to lift up a bush on the sidewalk just to be able to go inside. I was like, ‘Something’s got to be done!’ When you can’t walk on the sidewalks just to get into the building, it’s probably time to get out the trimmers.”

Sure enough, city employees from administrative assistant Kim Reburn to Hanceville Police Chief Bob Long and more turned out on Friday to help attack the arboreal obstacle course. Mayor Kenneth Nail credited Wilcox for taking the initiative to make city hall a more inviting place for guests, and said the effort was worth an hour’s extra pay for those who took part.

“One thing I can say about our employees is that they really care about our city, and they care about where they work. It was needed, and I’m glad somebody sort of stepped back and recognized that,” he said.

“Our public works people already work like crazy every day on bigger projects that keep our city looking nice, but city hall is really the place where most people are going to end up at one point or another. So it was a good deal for everyone to have our folks come out and hit it hard all at once.”