After a wind or ice storm downs tree limbs in Wichita, city crews come through neighborhoods and pick up the debris. The January 2005 ice storm required an army — 300 city and 200 contract workers with 200 pieces of equipment. Makes you wonder what Wichitans would make of the libertarian approach of McPherson, which has left it to residents and businesses to haul their recent storm debris to the local trash transfer station. “Our people, as a general rule, feel that the government is not the first place to go to get these things done,†McPherson Mayor William Goering told the Hutchinson News.
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10 Comments
McPherson is an interesting little town. Their approach to utilities vis-a-vis city owned generation is something we should all admire.
The logistics of getting storm debris in McPherson to the dump vs the same thing in Wichita is comparing apples to oranges. For one thing, McPherson is naturally the kind of community where everybody drives a pickup.
There needs to be a standard for when the city/county does/does not pick up debris. The recient ice storm in McPherson didn’t approach the severity of the 2005 ice storm. IMHO, the 2005 ice storm approached being a natural disaster.
Makes a lot of sense to me. Government is NOT our mommy/daddy, and is not there to bail us out of every possible scrape. The disgusting part about the Wichita cleanup was how it was meant to pickup tree limbs in the street–and thousands of people hauled out limbs from their back yard to take advantage of the ‘free’ pickup.
Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Is it completely dead?
Taz
Posted January 14, 2008 at 7:09 am
“The disgusting part about the Wichita cleanup was how it was meant to pickup tree limbs in the street–and thousands of people hauled out limbs from their back yard to take advantage of the ‘free’ pickup.”
Taz,
Where did it say that the Wichita cleanup was only for tree limbs that fell in the street? I had city workers tell me that if I stacked downed limbs at the curb, they’d be hauled away.
No, not everyone in small towns drive pickup trucks. It’s one of those expenses that everyone is using, so yeah, I think the city should pick up branches.
Or at least, allow an option to let us burn them on site.
Remember those days, when people used to burn our trash?
There are elderly people who would never get their stuff done…and there would be young people who would drag their branches into public or other people’s areas.
In the newspaper, on television and radio, the City announced it would remove branches from the street and City right of way, but that residents were responsible for limbs from their own yards. But.. thousands of people decided instead to take advantage of this “free” service. These are many of the same people that complain daily about paying taxes.
That 2005 ice storm was nasty. Went through 2 chains on a chain saw, replaced the standpipe on my electrical main meter and had a wall of wood 1/4 block long and 3 feet high that sat for a couple of months waiting to be picked up. My telephone and cable lines sat on the ground for months until the companies finally came out to fix them.
Had to hire some people to cut large branches from my roof and those that fell on the fence line.
There were free wood chips that year as I recall.
Translation: Most people in McPherson are too poor to afford natural gas, and heat with wood.
Will our jobs give us time off to do all the clean up? I work 7P-7A I am sure my neighbors would object to me running chainsaw at 2-3 AM because that’s when I am awake.
Let Wichita take care of their tree pickup and let McPherson take care of theirs. Different size town and perhaps attitudes.
After the 2005 ice storm, I had a pile of branches that (combined) were 75′ long, 10′ wide and 15′ high at it’s peak.
Just how the Hell would I be able to haul that off without having a dump truck to make multiple trips?
And you can’t use freshly downed limbs in a fireplace – unless the wood has been dried for at least two years, you stand a good chance on depositing creosote in your chimney, leading to fires and contributing pollution to the atmosphere.
Whoops! Forget that last part – I forgot that Republicans don’t care about pollution.