Northside Sun publisher Wyatt Emmerich interviews Locke Ward about his private initiative to clean up Jackson.
Ward, a real estate agent, noticed how clients were turned off by Jackson because of trash on the streets and overgrown grass and weeds along the roads. He realized it was hurting Jackson real estate, so he took matters into his own hands.
It all started with one cleanup effort that he did with few friends. He then posted before and after photos on his Facebook page and asked for donations. Th money poured in. So far he has raised $170,000 and cleaned up dozens of intersections, streets and storm drains.
In Ridgeland and Madison, the city governments pay for this, but Jackson has been AWOL. This could change soon, the Democratic nominee for mayor, John Horhn, has met with Ward about a partnership. Also, Willie Simmons, the central district commissioner for the Mississippi Department of Transportation, has also met with Ward about getting his organization clean up money.
What's surprising to Ward is how he has been able to do so much with so little. It shows that absent government bureaucracy, it doesn't take a lot of money to clean up our streets, which is the least costly way to improve Jackson's image.
Below is the Zoom AI Summary of the interview:
Wyatt Emmerich interviewed Locke Ward about his private efforts to clean up Jackson's streets, which has gained attention through social media presence and local media coverage. Ward discussed his successful community cleanup initiatives in Jackson, which have been funded through private donations and have improved local streets and properties, with Emmerich suggesting potential future government funding opportunities.
Ward discussed his initiative to clean up highways and storm drains in Jackson, which began when he noticed the area's neglect during a tour with doctors. He has since organized volunteers to remove trash, power wash barriers, and clean storm drains, with some funding coming from private donations. Ward met with Senator Horhn and Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons to discuss the importance of maintaining clean corridors for the city's image, but noted that MDOT only sprays for weeds in certain areas and lacks consistent maintenance in Jackson.
Ward discussed his successful community cleanup efforts in Jackson, which have been funded through private donations and have improved local streets and properties. He has raised approximately $170,000 and has about $30,000-40,000 remaining in his account, having completed projects with minimal city involvement. Ward explained he coordinates cleanup projects through his Facebook page "Locke Ward" and a GoFundMe page, with donations also being accepted at First Commercial Bank. Emmerich praised Ward's efforts and suggested that with a new city administration, he might receive government funding, while Ward clarified that his work is community-focused and not intended to promote her real estate business.
Key takeaways
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Locke Ward initiated a private cleanup initiative in Jackson after realizing the poor state of city maintenance
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The initiative has raised approximately $170,000 and spent about $130,000 on city cleanup efforts
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Projects include highway cleanup, storm drain clearing, and power washing of concrete barriers
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The effort demonstrates that significant city maintenance can be accomplished with relatively modest funding
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Current funding comes from private donations through GoFundMe and First Commercial Bank
Discussed topics
Origin and Growth of Cleanup Initiative
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Details
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Locke Ward: Started after showing doctors around Jackson who commented on poor maintenance
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Initial project at Canton Mart Underpass with Casey Bridges
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$6,000 in initial donations sparked larger movement
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Expanded to include highway cleanup, power washing, and storm drain maintenance
Current Operations and Funding
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Details
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Approximately $170,000 raised total
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$30-40,000 remaining in account
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Funding through GoFundMe and First Commercial Bank account
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Regular maintenance now requires less time than initial cleanups
Government Involvement
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Details
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Senator Horhn and Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons showed interest
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Discussion about MDOT's role in maintenance
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Comparison with Ridgeland and Madison's maintenance programs
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Potential for future government funding support
Impact on Community
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Details
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Improved city appearance for medical professionals and visitors
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Enhanced property values
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Community engagement through volunteer work
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Regular maintenance of high-traffic areas
Action items
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MDOT
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City of Jackson
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Locke Ward
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Clean creek on Catherine Boulevard (Next week)
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Continue coordination of cleanup projects based on community requests
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Maintain documentation through Facebook page updates
Full transcript of the Zoom interview.
Emmerich News:
All right, here we go!
This is Wyatt Emmerich at the Northside Sun, and I've got Locke Ward in a Zoom interview.
Locke has been doing amazing things, basically cleaning up the streets of Jackson on his own with private money—something the city should be doing, but is not.
He's got a great Facebook presence, and many of you probably already know about what he's done and have seen his work along the interstate and the frontage roads. I mean, there's almost no end to what he's been doing.
So I thought it'd be good to interview him and let him tell you about how he got started and what he's doing now.
So, how did this all get started, Locke?
Locke Ward:
Well, Wyatt, I've talked about this several times in the past. You know, I'm a real estate agent here in town.
I do a lot of community tours with UMC, and I ride doctors and incoming candidates around in my car, showing them the tri-county area and what we have to offer so they'll want to come work here.
About a year and eight months ago, I was riding around with two doctors. We were driving through Jackson. I'm born and raised in Jackson—lived here my entire life—and I didn't really notice what they were talking about.
But we drove through Jackson, and when we got up to Ridgeland, they looked at me and said, "Well, this is a whole lot better."
I said, "What do you mean?"
They said, "Did you not just see what you drove us through? The amount of trash on the highway, weeds growing out of the sides of the barricades—everything."
The next morning, I woke up and told my wife, "I'm going to go ride around the city of Jackson and really look at this place, because I never really noticed it, honestly."
When I got back, I told my wife, "This place looks awful." MDOT had not cleaned up the highway in years. I hadn't seen a street sweeper out in Jackson, Mississippi, in years.
So, I called a guy named Casey Bridges and said, "Casey, meet me out at the CVS over under the Canton Mart Square—well, I call it the Canton Mart Underpass, by Kroger."
Casey helped me clean it up. We did it for free, and we did a before-and-after video. I sent that video out to some of my friends and said, "Hey, can you all donate a little bit of money to help me pay for this? I just cleaned up the side of the highway, and it looks fantastic. Before we started, you couldn't even walk on it, and after four hours and one 14-foot dump trailer, it looked like brand new."
That led to $6,000 hitting my Venmo account rather than the $2,000 I asked for, and everybody said, "Keep going."
To be honest with you, it's just kind of snowballed. We've been cleaning up the sides of the highways. We started out concentrating on the frontage roads and highways, getting all that looking a lot better.
When we got that settled in, we started power washing the sides of the concrete around the highways. We've power washed basically every barrier bridge in Jackson that I can find.
It's an easy thing—it only costs a couple hundred dollars to do those, and it makes a lasting difference. We did one a year and a half ago, and it still looks brand new today. Before we started, it was black.
Those small things make a big difference, in my opinion.
One person said, "What about the storm drains? All these streets are flooding." Casey Bridges' guys are incredible. They work really hard. I bet you, Wyatt, we've cleaned out probably 300 storm drains.
The city could have done that in less than a week, honestly, because they've got that big old vacuum truck.
So, we've cleaned out storm drains, we've been power washing, we've been cleaning up trash on the sides of the highways—all that good stuff.
It's been nice to see the transition from dirty to somewhat clean, but as you well know, when we clean it up, it gets dirty again. Roger and I were underneath the bridge this morning, cleaning up from the weekend, and it only took us about 15–20 minutes to clean it up. When we first started, it took us hours. Now, it's gotten a lot more manageable.
Emmerich News:
Well, maybe the new mayor can appoint you as public works director. Would you be willing to do that?
Locke Ward:
No, I mean, I don't—I have a really good, in my opinion, real estate business going on. I've been doing it for 24 years, so I don't know if I want to throw away a real estate career to become a public works director.
Emmerich News:
Let me ask you this: In Ridgeland and Madison, the city does this, right? But in Jackson, no. What's going on there?
Locke Ward:
Yeah.
Well, my understanding is—though it might not be right—the city in Ridgeland and Madison, like today, I was out showing a house in Wright's Mill this morning, and I saw US Lawns working on the highway.
My understanding is that the city of Ridgeland and the city of Madison pay US Lawns, in addition to the city workers, to come in and edge and use finishing mowers along the highways.
So, I think they pay in addition, kind of like what LeFleur's East is doing with Justin Robinette. LeFleur's East passed that tax bill that's good now for 10 more years—or actually 9 more years.
As you well know, Justin Robinette with Southern Horticulture has the highways and frontage roads from the Pearl River bridge at Lakeland all the way to St. Dominic's, all the way to Kroger, maintained beautifully. That's been done through a tax increase on the businesses along the LeFleur's East corridor.
I don't know how Ridgeland pays for it, but I know Ridgeland and Madison have US Lawns, and they come in and do all that stuff in addition to what the city is doing, in my understanding.
Emmerich News:
Maybe with a new administration in Jackson, your group could seek some funding, so you wouldn't rely totally on private contributions. Is that something you see happening?
Locke Ward:
No.
That would be great, honestly.
Senator Horhn called me at 7:45 in the morning the day after he won his runoff for the Democratic primary. He called me and said, "Locke, I'm ready to get prepared. I'd like to talk to you about what y'all have been doing."
We met at Broad Street two days later with Willie Simmons, the Transportation Commissioner.
We sat there for about an hour and a half and talked about how important it was to keep this area clean.
Back to real estate—you know, we've got lots of doctors and nurses that go to St. Dominic's, Baptist, and UMC.
Whether you live in Jackson, Madison, or Ridgeland, people are riding down I-55 every day, all day long, and if it does not look good, some of these doctors might not get a good impression of Jackson.
So I told Willie Simmons it's important to keep the corridor from Woodrow Wilson to County Line Road as clean as possible.
Emmerich News:
And that's probably one of the least expensive ways to improve the image of your city. I mean, potholes and resurfacing take a lot more money than picking up the trash and edging the lawn.
If the lawn and the trash were picked up at least, I think people would still have a better image, even if there were a lot of potholes. You could blame that on the Yazoo clay.
Locke Ward:
Well, I'll tell you this. I got in a little bit of trouble with MDOT, I guess.
We had a 14-foot dump trailer going down the middle of the highway with a Jackson police officer escort, and we cleaned up every weed on the highway from Lakeland to Northside Drive.
It looked fantastic for about three or four months, and it cost me about $2,000 total.
I told Willie Simmons a couple of weeks ago, "Willie, if you'll allow me, I can keep the highway clean and free."
I told him we needed to spray the weeds also. Willie—I'm not talking bad about him, because he's a nice guy—but he did not know that the weeds were not being sprayed.
Just the other day, I was in Rankin County cleaning off the bridge at the Pearl River, and sure enough, MDOT had a crew out there spraying weeds.
I asked them, "Why are y'all not in Jackson?" and they said, "Oh, we do Rankin County only."
I've not seen anybody spray for weeds on the side of the highway in Jackson since we started.
To get some help from MDOT would be great—to spray the weeds so they kill the weeds off.
The weeds are the problem because they attract and hold the trash. If the weeds are gone, the trash just kind of floats down the highway to where it can be picked up. In the middle, it gets stuck by all the trees and debris.
Emmerich News:
Interesting. Well, you know, the legislature passed some better funding for MDOT, so maybe that might open up some money for maintenance.
The problem is, they're using every penny they can to get matching federal dollars—like a four-to-one or five-to-one match.
When they do maintenance, there's no federal match, so they're neglecting the maintenance.
Hopefully, that gets fixed. MDOT and the city of Jackson need to ante up.
You've already proven that you can do it for really peanuts, compared to government expenditures.
They should just—well, you could still seek your private donations, but you could do so much more. Of course, you have a real estate business to run, but I think it's hilarious that you did this to help you sell houses, because you couldn't sell any houses with the horrible-looking streets.
Locke Ward:
Well, let me say this. That's not—I mean, I did this because the two doctors said, "Man, this looks terrible."
Obviously, I sell houses every day all over the place, so I don't know if it necessarily affected it, but it's a lot nicer to have a clean and pretty-looking city. I think it makes it look nice.
The lady I was driving around yesterday—I was explaining to her what we were doing and what it looked like before, and she said, "That's fantastic. I can't believe you're trying to do this."
I don't want to say that people weren't buying houses before, but I think it definitely helps the candidates that are coming in with UMC, St. Dominic's, and Baptist to have a clean city. I think it makes a big difference.
Emmerich News:
I think it makes a huge difference.
People should realize that when they make a private donation to your group, they're enhancing the property value of their home, and that really makes sense.
What are your projects looking like going forward? Do you have anything new going on?
Locke Ward:
Yeah.
Yesterday, I had a lady call me and say, "Hey, Locke, there's a ditch down on Catherine Boulevard, at the end of Northside Drive, that's looked terrible for years."
The way I've been doing this, Wyatt, is I go and basically do what people want me to do.
I'm not actually doing the physical labor—I just send people and tell Casey's guys what to do. I take pictures and coordinate everything.
Yesterday, a lady wants her creek cleaned out on Catherine because the neighbors aren't able to get it done, and I've already raised the money. She's already sent in a bunch of money to have the creek cleaned next week.
To raise all the money, I do the projects, take a before-and-after video, and then ask for donations. People know the money is going toward the projects.
Emmerich News:
Locke has sent me so many photos—more than we can publish.
Locke, tell us how we can follow what you're doing. I think you have a good Facebook page. How can people see your work?
Locke Ward:
Yep.
It's on my Facebook account: Locke Ward—L-O-C-K-E W-A-R-D.
I post stuff on Facebook, so people can follow along there.
We have a "Clean Up Jackson" Facebook page, but nobody monitors that. I just put everything on my personal account.
Emmerich News:
And they can Venmo you money? What's your Venmo?
Locke Ward:
I don't do Venmo anymore because I like to use the GoFundMe page.
I have a "Clean Up Jackson" GoFundMe page.
Also, a lot of people use First Commercial Bank. I have an account at First Commercial Bank called "Clean Up Jackson."
The teller at First Commercial Bank says people come in every now and then and just write her a check, and I don't even know about it.
Emmerich News:
Perfect. So just go to First Commercial, walk in, tell them it's for "Clean Up Jackson," write a check, and let's keep this going.
Hopefully, with a new administration, you'll get some government money from the city of Jackson, and good luck with getting MDOT funding.
With their new funding mechanism from the state legislature, maybe you'll get more money because you've proven it's not a lot of money.
If you just go out and hire a crew, you can do it.
I think you've got a lot of volunteers. I know my brother-in-law, Terrell Knight, has volunteered for you.
How many people have volunteered just for free?
Locke Ward:
Well, I think now I've raised about $170,000, and I still have probably $30,000–$40,000 left in the account.
We've done all this on less than $150,000, and I think we've done a lot.
The city just paid somebody $110,000 to mow and blow the grass at Atkins, Beasley, County Line Road, and all those places, and I don't see them half the time doing anything, to be honest with you.
Willie Simmons asked me what I could do with some money if he gave it to me, and I said we could do a lot with a little bit of money.
Truthfully, we could have the highways cleaned up if they would just give us access to some lane closures—we could have that highway literally cleaned up in less than a day.
Emmerich News:
Let me tell you, Locke, this is just a great example of a citizen taking action. You're a local hero.
I can't tell you how many people I've met who know about you and this effort.
It shows what you can do, and whatever the Northside Sun can do to further this cause, you let me know.
Locke Ward:
Can I say just one thing real quick?
I just want to make it clear—I've worried about this, to be honest—I'm not here to promote my real estate business.
I've had people ask, "Locke, are you still selling houses? Can you still sell houses with all the work you're doing?"
I want to let people know that I'm doing this to help the Jackson real estate market, and yes, this is not affecting my real estate business. I just want to make that clear.
Emmerich News:
Okay, Locke is killing it in real estate, and he's doing this for the community good. So if you need a realtor—Locke Ward—go to it.
Locke Ward:
Thank you.
Well, Wyatt, we'll keep on cleaning up and make this place look better.
Emmerich News:
All right, good talking to you. Bye-bye.
Locke Ward:
Thanks, mate. Bye-bye.
