Residents of the Historic District voiced their concerns with local trash clean up and parking at Tuesday’s Ward 3 community meeting held at Byrd Elementary School.

Ward 3 councilman Greg Bjelke, alongside Mayor George Evans and code enforcement officer Sgt. Natasha Rozzell, fielded questions from attendees and urged them to work together to make changes to the city.

Evans said he recognized litter and trash in Selma is a major concern.

“You’ve got people who do not care about trash and litter at all,” he said. “If only one person in a given block says, ‘I’m going to make sure that this block is clean and I’m going to do it myself,’ somebody will come out and help you, I believe. But we can’t even get that. It’s about pride and everybody buying in to the fact that regardless of who put it there, ‘This is my block and I want it clean.’”

Rozzell also warned citizens about common parking violations that she sees on a day-to-day basis around Selma.

“Parking in the yard, that’s a big issue, especially in Ward 3,” she said. “Parking in the street is a violation. You can’t park in the street on the side of the road. If somebody comes along and hits your vehicle, on the accident report, it asks, ‘Was the car parked legally?’ No.”

After much confusion among the more than 40 citizens that turned out to the meeting, Evans clarified Rozzell’s statement, saying that parking on the street only becomes a violation if someone hits your car because they have a right to file a case against you.

Cars parked on sidewalks, roadways and in yards have created problems throughout all of Selma, Evans said, but it’s difficult to reach a solution to the problem.

“It’s just a bad situation that I don’t have an answer to until the city government can come up with a solution or somebody gives a suggestion,” Evans said. “I can tell you that it’s not something that’s going to go away in one night. I don’t know what ordinance we can write that doesn’t put somebody at a disadvantage. It’s just a bad situation that’s been brewing for a long time that I don’t have a real answer for.”

Evans attributed the problem to a change in eras, as years ago, when many city and state ordinances were written and streets and homes built, every family owned only one or two cars at a time.

“Now people have got four or five cars and, as a result of that, they want to park in front of their homes,” Evans said. “We’re in a new world, it’s a new era of people.”

To close the meeting, Bjelke offered tips to combat the recent rash of crime that has occurred in the ward and throughout the city. He urged citizens to know their neighbors, take all valuables with them when leaving their vehicles and be nosey, among other things.

“Things just aren’t getting any better in terms of how people act and what they do,” Evans added. “Everybody needs to look out for each other. It’s not going to get any better as long as we do nothing but pass the buck. Some of these things aren’t going to go away until we all decide that we’re going to work together and make it happen.”