Berlin Programs Receive Awards For Partnership

BERLIN -- Main Street Berlin (MSB) and Grow Berlin Green (GBG) received a joint Clean, Safe, and Green award from Main Street Maryland (MSM) at the recent Maryland Preservation Conference.

“We received the award because of our partnership with Grow Berlin Green,” said Economic Development Director Mike Day at Monday’s Mayor and Council Meeting.

Day explained to the council that MSM granted five awards every year, and that this was the first year Berlin would receive the Clean, Safe, and Green recognition.

Day attributed the award to the partnership between the organizations and a focus on commercial recycling and encouraging residents to be conservative and reuse materials as much as possible.

Mayor Gee Williams congratulated MSM and GBG on the award and praised them for their efforts to make Berlin “green” and more conservation minded.

“It has exceeded my expectations … the great thing is, it [the town] is getting noticed,” he said.

Williams was especially proud of the eco-friendly reputation that Berlin was cultivating.

“We’ve got miles to go,” stressed Lower Shore Land Trust Executive Director Kate Patton, who is a member of GBG.

Though this is the first year Berlin has won a Clean, Safe, and Green award since it joined MSM in 2008, it has received honors in other categories before.

In 2009, just a year after first becoming a “Main Street Community,” Berlin was noticed for excellence in one of the other five categories.

“We won the organization award the first year we were a Main Street,” said Day.

Day explained that just becoming a Main Street town was an honor in and of itself.

“It’s a pretty intensive application,” he admitted.

According to Day, there are only 23 Main Street communities in all of Maryland. There were only 18 when Berlin applied in 2008. Five towns were accepted that year; however, since then, no other communities have been granted the “Main Street” designation.

Berlin finds itself in an even more exclusive field, since only eight of the 23 communities are located on the Eastern Shore. Though the town did not win awards in the years between its inception into MSM and this year, Day did point out that Berlin has been nationally accredited as a Main Street community every year since the beginning.