KEYSTONE CLIPS Day scheduled for litter pickup

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is looking for some Mercer County volunteers to help clean up state highways in the county April 28.
That's Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful Day in the Commonwealth, a day set aside annually over the past two decades to clean up litter along the roads.
Nearly 200,000 Pennsylvanians volunteered for the effort last year. Participants get certificates of appreciation and a beautification-certification patch that is redesigned each year, making it a collector's item.
Groups that participate in PennDOT's Adopt-A-Highway program, in which they regularly clean up litter along a designated section of highway, are encouraged to make April 28 one of their cleanup days.
Mercer County has 245 groups enrolled in that program and they help maintain 548 miles of road, nearly 75 percent of the state highways in the county.
For information about the Adopt-A-Highway program or to volunteer for Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful Day, call Ted Krueger at the Mercer County PennDOT garage at (724) 662-5350.
Machine demos: The Mercer County Elections Office is taking its Touchscreen voting demonstration unit to Salem Township this week.
The county has purchased an electronic voting system that will be used in all precincts in the May 15 primary election and the county office is taking one of the voting units to various locations around the county now to give people a chance to become familiar with the system.
The machine will be on display from 5 to 8 p.m. Monday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday at the home of David and Pat Chess of 61 Osborn Road, the township's regular polling place. All voters are invited to take a look at the system.
Trees, please: New Castle residents are invited to participate in the city's shade tree commission planting program.
Participants may donate $20 for each tree. The trees will be planted throughout the city in the grassy patch between the street and sidewalk. Two sizes and several varieties are available.
A stump removal program is also being offered. Homeowners who use the stump service must agree to plant a tree.
For more information, call (724) 658-6416.
Teens That Care: Sharpsville High School students in the Teens That Care club are gathering supplies to outfit a basic classroom in a community that has been devastated by disaster. It's part of the school chest project organized by the Mercer County Chapter of the American Red Cross. The donated supplies will be packed in a portable storage chest and sent to a community that has been the victim of one of the recent international disasters.
The list of materials includes 40 bound notebooks, 120 No. 2 pencils with erasers and 40 pencil sharpeners. Rulers, a tape measure, colored chalk and crayons, compasses and even jump ropes and a soccer ball complete the package.
For more information, contact the American Red Cross at (724) 981-3205.
XCONTRIBUTORS: Harold Gwin, Vindicator Sharon Bureau, and Virginia Ross, correspondent.