If you drive by Eagle Point and Urish you will see a statue of a blue eagle. It used to be bronze but someone painted it blue and wrote '09 on the pedestal. Traffic signs around the area have suffered the same fate. Residents are fed up. So fed up that an anonymous donor has offered $5,000.00 to anyone who provides information leading the Sheriff's Office to the people who are responsible.
Residents are not the only ones who are fed up. Washburn Rural High School principal Ed Raines has united staff with students to volunteer to clean it up. He says the reputation of WRHS is being tarnished because the community believes they are responsible. Raines hopes that when volunteers from the high school show up to help clean it up they will see that the high school is not defined by those who make poor choices.
If anyone wishes to volunteer to help the group will meet in the parking lot of WRHS at 8:30 Saturday, May 24th. They will also meet the following Saturday. Residents whose homes have been vandalized can call the school to be placed on the clean up list.
When school let out for the day Wednesday the ditches near the streets surrounding the school were full of school papers. The high school staff volunteered to pick up the sheets tossed out by students likely in celebration. They say they took names and will provide the evidence to the Sheriff's Office for them to determine what action, if any, to take. In the meantime the teachers say a detention may be waiting for some students when they return next school year.
Fines for littering, according to the Sheriff's Office, range between $10 and $500.