MONROE, CT — Margo Solonskyi, 9, a Stepney Elementary School student whose family emigrated here from Ukraine, participated in the Ms. President US program to learn how to be a politician. One of her assignments was to write a letter to an elected official in her town, offering ideas on an issue and sharing the response with her classmates.
Margo decided to write to First Selectman Terry Rooney to pitch her ideas on how to combat littering and promote recycling. Rooney not only responded, he invited Margo to visit him in his office at Monroe Town Hall.
“Margo didn’t waste any time telling me what to do in town,” he said. “I had been in office about a month and she came in with a well thought out plan to clean our roads. She said there was just too much garbage and asked what I was doing about it.”
“I was taken aback, however she was absolutely right,” Rooney said. “Our roads were a mess, full of debris, and that’s when we were on a total cleanup and hand cleaned from our roads 15 truckloads of garbage. The moral to this story is our kids care and notice things we wouldn’t expect.”
In her letter, Margo suggested having recycling bins in schools and at public areas around town.
“Today, people are eating a lot of fast foods and use a lot of packages for food and drinks to go,” she wrote, “so they can throw out the packages at any time and not pollute the grounds of the town and we need more recycling bins in town.”
Margo also proposed having clean up days, when all of the town’s residents go outside and pick up litter to make Monroe a cleaner place to live.
“It will be great to have a law that says, ‘if you litter, pick it up,'” she wrote, adding, “it will help the people be more responsible that will be awesome to the nature and Earth.”
“Thank you for reading this letter and I hope that we can start doing this today and make Monroe the best place ever in Connecticut now with recycling things that can be turned into new things that can be reused,” Margo closed. “Thank you so much and hope you will make Monroe a better place.”
After her visit at Town Hall, the first selectman arranged for Margo to receive some town Christmas ornaments. Rooney said he is impressed by how much the young girl cares about her town.
“Margo is very interested in making Monroe a better place, so it doesn’t surprise me that she was chosen for Monroe President US,” he said. “Since that first visit, Margo runs up to me at every event and that’s special. Her parents are very kind and moved here from Ukraine. The entire family always have big smiles when Margo runs up and gives me a piece of her mind. I joke and say, ‘oh no, the boss is going to give me work to do.’ It’s no doubt Margo has a bright future ahead of her.”
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