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Colonel Richardson High School 2025 graduate Danika Jeanty was officially recognized by the Town of Preston during it’s Commission workshop meeting on June 30, 2025 as having received the Town of Preston Legacy Creative Arts and Athletics scholarship in the amount of $1,000.
The scholarship is sponsored by The Red Shef owners, who also founded the Legacy Creative Arts and Athletics organization, in conjunction with the Town of Preston. Jenty plans to further her education at Chesapeake College and the University of Texas, majoring in nursing. Her goal is to work as a NICU or pediatric nurse in the Pacific Northwest.
Also on the agenda for the workshop was a suggestion from Preston resident Jill Creighton. Town Manager Amber Korell summarized Creighton’s emailed suggestion to the Commissioners for consideration, “She said that she had seen where other towns had offered dumpsters available to their citizens several times throughout the year…so as they clean up their yards and homes, they can come dispose of unwanted items. She wants to advocate for our town to do something similar to that.”
“I like this citizen suggestion,” said Commissioner Dan Mulford. The conversation sparked ideas among the Commissioners on how to make waste removal more accessible and affordable for Preston’s residents.
Preston does not currently have a dedicated trash removal company. According to Korell, when she inquired about putting the town’s waste removal out for bid in 2020, responses from residents were “fifty-fifty.” Many residents utilize local dumps, but as the Commissioners pointed out, not everyone has access to a truck or trailer to haul their garbage.
Korell noted that she had researched some other towns who provided this periodic service of a centrally located dumpster for citizen use. She said the town of Federalsburg charges residents $30 for two items to be put in the dumpster.
Commissioner Janice Isenberg said she knows that Hurlock does something similar relating to yard debris — which led Commissioner Scott Messick to throw out the idea of contracting with a landscaping company to provide yard waste pick-up. “We have a ban on burning yard waste, but we have no place to take yard waste.” He acknowledged that the dump allows for yard debris disposal, “but not everybody has a trailer, and not everybody wants to drive to Ridgely or Salisbury.” Korell mentioned that other towns use their Public Works team to pick up yard waste.
Preston’s Town Code also bans large discarded items like refrigerators, mattresses, furniture, etc. from being left outside residents’ homes. Korell said that Code Enforcement goes through town each week to check for compliance, “there's often times that we see things…and we'll normally give it a week, if it's still there, then we'll say, ‘Hey, you got something going on there, you got 30 days to get rid of it.’ The majority of time, they say ‘Oh, we're waiting on trailer, we’ll get it out of here next week.’ But there are times that it may sit there until our guys pick it up.” The total fine for a violation of this nature can be hundreds of dollars — “much more expensive” than the previous example of a $30 fee to utilize a town-sponsored dumpster.
Everyone was in agreement that if Preston were to host a dumpster day of sorts, it would have to be monitored to ensure citizens weren’t discarding extremely heavy or potentially dangerous items.
The Commissioners directed Korell to continue researching procedures in other towns and bring more specific cost estimates from dumpster companies to future Commission meetings and workshops. They said they would circle back to both the topic of occasionally furnishing a dumpster for resident use and possibly looking into a general town-wide trash removal service.
