If anyone is keeping track
I really enjoyed Dean Nordenson's My Turn in Sunday's paper. I too have been wondering about the choices being made for DOT's road maintenance cutbacks.
Related Editorial:
My Turn: Ready to play the road-maintenance game?
Specifically I was wondering why they had a guy spend the entire month of September playing around with his side-of-the-road weed-cutting machine on North Douglas Highway. He came and cut weeds three separate times on the stretch of road by my driveway. The funniest part is that the plants he thrashed and smashed near my house are all plants that have no aboveground winter portion.
In other words, they grow up fresh and new every spring and cutting them down in September serves no road maintenance purpose whatsoever. I expect it supplies a nice mulch for nurturing the underground portion of the plant. And maybe the guy enjoys dumping lots of leaves and stems into areas that have to be cleaned up by the homeowners (3x).
It was soon after the first roadside cutting, right after Labor Day, that I started hearing those radio ads from DOT saying watch out, they just wouldn't be able to do the maintenance and plowing up to former levels. So imagine my surprise when the weeds get cut a second time the second week of September; and a third time the last week of September. Every day that month I kept seeing that guy and the machine along the road, and I kept thinking to myself that a guy walking along with a good pruning hook could have done a much more functional (not to mention far better looking) job in about half the time.
I don't feel up to making those phone calls that Dean mentioned, but if anyone at DOT or CBJ or the Legislature is keeping track, I vote for more snow plowing, less alder slashing and harmless weed cutting.
Kathleen "KJ" Bailey
North Douglas