City Wide Pick Up- Is It Right?

I work for a city, and from my point of view, city wide pick up sucks. We do it only for Buckthorn, not supposed to be for the limbs you just cut off or the shrubs you pulled out of your landscape even though it's all in the pile when I arrive. Anyways, These are grand ideas dreamed up by a city manager that has way to much to lose politically if he doesn't look "friendly". If he feels that he can get something out of this by using us as his politcal tools, he's going to do it. The worst part is as I'm sure most of you know, is that homeowners think a giant tangled haystack of brush is neatly piled.
Do I feel that we are taking away work from other business? Yes and no, Yes some of these people would call you to come by and at the very minimum pick up the brush, but most of these people are do it yourselfers and will just drop the brush on the side of country road, or at best take it to a compost site. Good Luck!!!
 
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I just have a problem with mostly:

1. Homeowner Jack goes into e-room with a broken leg from falling off a ladder pruning his tree. Incident is reported-damages statistics for the arborcultural industry.

2. Flush cuts

3. Stubs

4. Over prunning

5. Topping

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All that sounds more like a topic of education than free pick up. Again Homeowner Jack is probally doin it himself, free pick up or not.
How's this for an idea... in the paper where it tells you when free pick up is, the city adds another couple lines of informational material on 2-5 (see above) different one every month or whatever. Then also include EVERY time the dangers of tree work, the importance of hiring a professional, and how to find one locally. Now that is something I could get behind.
 
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I work for a city, and from my point of view, city wide pick up sucks. We do it only for Buckthorn, not supposed to be for the limbs you just cut off or the shrubs you pulled out of your landscape even though it's all in the pile when I arrive. Anyways, These are grand ideas dreamed up by a city manager that has way to much to lose politically if he doesn't look "friendly". If he feels that he can get something out of this by using us as his politcal tools, he's going to do it. The worst part is as I'm sure most of you know, is that homeowners think a giant tangled haystack of brush is neatly piled.
Do I feel that we are taking away work from other business? Yes and no, Yes some of these people would call you to come by and at the very minimum pick up the brush, but most of these people are do it yourselfers and will just drop the brush on the side of country road, or at best take it to a compost site. Good Luck!!!

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I second that.
 
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How's this for an idea... in the paper where it tells you when free pick up is, the city adds another couple lines of informational material on 2-5 (see above) different one every month or whatever. Then also include EVERY time the dangers of tree work, the importance of hiring a professio.nal, and how to find one locally.

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Now were getting onto something...I have to think though with the city's already strapped budget their not going to want to or allow anymore space for advertisement. I use to work for the local newspaper and everything was charged according to size, its not cheap too. The local forester here is about the smartest guy I have ever met and I would assume to think the thought has crossed his mind. At least I would hope so. I guess its my duty to make sure it has.....I see trees more as a responsabiltity now than before becoming an arborist. If we dont speak for them, who will?
 
I thought about that cost thing too and I already got you covered. I bet you could find a local tree crew to cover the cost of the add in exchange for having their name and number placed after the "importance of hiring a professional" part.

Things may get sketchy on the part of government supporting a private bussiness or somethin (sometimes governments have stupid laws like that... for instance we are not to acceppt anything even a glass of water when we are working at a house as it may be seen as a bribe for doing more or better work), but I am sure there are ways of getting around it like maybe having that company "donate" that space in their advertisement. But that would really depend on that specific city and if there were good arborists in the area that would be willing to do that.
 
I threw this by the local forester recently and he simply said "Its a public service the City provides."

As much as we humans like to complicate simple things, he's probably right- There is a need for the service, so the city provides said service.
 
When I was in MN there were a couple of local cities that did curbside brush removal in the spring. The residents figured out quickly that they could hire arbos to do the work, pile the debris on the curb and let the city/their tax dollars, pay for removal. This didn't happen too often though.

There were some people who would whack off some limbs here and there or do removals. There's always the risk of injury too. We all know how the grapevine grows and I never heard of a resident being injured.

This sort of project makes the city a much nicer place to live. Instead of having debris piled up in people's back yards looking crappy it's gone. That leaves the city looking much nicer.

Many cities have trash days too. Bring household debris to a site for roll-off dumpster recycling. The stuff was sorted and fed back into the recycling stream. some did go to the landfill though.
 
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There is a need for the service, so the city provides said service.

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I would disagree, the city I work for only takes limbs from trees that are in the right-of-way and it is quite rare to see limbs layin around. I would imagine cause the people too lazy to take care of them are also the ones too lazy to cut them out of the tree, but that is just a guess.

In fact in my opinion, there are more yards that look absolutly terrible on perpose (the my whole yard is a garden type) than I see piles of sticks laying around.

Granted every city is different and it is up to the representatives to decide how to handle it and the tax payers to pay for it or leave.
 
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