Eureka may no longer have street sweepers combing the city's roads, but businesses and residents plan to take up some of the responsibility to make their blocks cleaner.

A number of local agencies and businesses are beginning to organize an “Adopt a Block” program that will encourage business owners and others to pick a block in Eureka to keep clean. The Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce is encouraging its members to participate by helping form the program and then pick a block to remove litter, graffiti, weeds and other nuisances, said chamber executive director J Warren Hockaday. Organizers are working to have the kickoff date be the city's May Day cleanup event.

Hockaday said the chamber and other partners in the budding program would like to work with the city, which is why they plan to coordinate with the annual cleanup on May 1. Right now, the chamber is informally calling businesses to garner interest and bring people together to improve the visual appearance of the city. So far, business owners have been enthusiastic.

”We all have such pride in the city to begin with -- it was an easy sell,” Hockaday said.

One of the agencies partnering with the chamber for the program is Eureka Main Street, a program that serves the 49 blocks between A and I streets and is a public-private partnership between the Eureka Redevelopment Agency and downtown and Old Town merchants. Main Street Executive Director Charlotte McDonald said other groups have been working toward the same goal in different ways, including the Eureka Rescue Mission volunteers cleaning up some areas and maintaining streetscapes. The adopt a block program can coordinate these efforts and others to get more people involved toward the “common goal that is to encourage taking pride in our community,” she said.

”It's just one more way members of this community can spruce up our area,” McDonald said.

While the program is still being developed and partnerships are still being forged, the plan is to have a map of Eureka online that would allow people to pick a block and “adopt” the responsibility to maintain its appearance. Redwood Capital Bank President and CEO John Dalby said the bank has offered to sponsor the website, along with adopting two city blocks.

”We're all in,” Dalby said.

The lack of street sweeping from last year's budget cuts was part of the reason the adopt a block program has been started, but Hockaday said it also comes from a desire to improve the look of the city in other ways, such as removing graffiti. Local government can't afford to handle the responsibility as much as it could in prior years, and every time the partners in the project sit down to meet, new ideas are presented to improve Eureka.

”It's starting to take on some monumental dimensions,” Hockaday said.

Staff writer Allison White can be reached at 441-0506 or awhite [at] times-standard [dot] com.