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On a recent July afternoon, piles of tree branches
towered high above streets and street corners in the Sherwood subdivision
— in one case, the limbs had nearly conquered an intersection’s
stop sign. Ward 7 Ald. Debbie Cimarossa says that this
isn’t going to cut it. “It looked like there had been another
storm,” Cimarossa says. “It looked bad.”
Cimarossa has received many complaints from
Sherwood’s residents, who say that limbs sometimes sit for longer
than a month before crews pick them up. After a visit to the neighborhood
last week, Cimarossa brought the issue before the City Council and
public-works director Mike Norris. “I almost witnessed two accidents when I was
there,” Cimarossa told Norris. “I went up and talked to this
guy, and his limbs have been sitting there about a month. They promised him
they would get them yesterday. I’m not criticizing your staff, but
don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Norris acknowledged that the Sherwood subdivision is
a problem area but said that there is no easy solution. “People are going to cut it when they’re
going to cut it,” he said. “It becomes very problematic. People
pile them on corners, where we have to go get them. We have to break normal
routine to go get them because they cause traffic hazards.”
Between April and November, public-works crews sweep
through quadrants of the city, picking up branches and yard waste. Norris
says that they circle through neighborhoods every four to five weeks.
Todd Claycomb, a dispatcher with the Department of
Public Works for 20 years, receives the most frequent complaints about
branches and says that the problem is mostly a result of residents’
waiting to put their limbs out. “They see the trucks go down the street, and
they drag stuff out behind them,” Claycomb says. “No one wants
to sit them out and kill their grass, and I don’t blame
them.”
In the past, aldermen have suggested putting signs up
in neighborhoods, publicizing where public-works crews will be working on
certain days. Others have suggested putting the schedule up on the
public-works department’s Web site or sending the schedule to
aldermen.
The city has dealt with the limb-pickup issue for a
long time, says Cimarossa, and for her the solution seems simple: “It’s a double-edged sword, because we
don’t have the staff. We need to make sure we give them the equipment
and tools they need to get the job done — we need more communication
and more education.”
In addition to the Web site, Cimarossa suggests using
the public-works newsletter or its zone managers to spread the word on
limb-pickup times. She also suggests using Springfield Green to focus more
on limbs and the public-safety issues that result when they’re left
on the streets. Claycomb agrees that better communication will help
solve the problem: “If the public is more aware of how we’re
doing it and where we’re at, it would benefit us and them.”
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2007.
