Citizen complaint of the day: Do something about the damn leaves

This isn’t the woods, it is a heavily used park in an urbanized area in a rich first-world country. We pay property taxes commensurate with that. Expecting the government to provide the basic grounds maintenance that we are paying for, hardly seems unreasonable or disconnected from anything.

But how long have the leaves been there?

By Keiko
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 10:26am

A few days ago, I raked my leaves before going to work. Got back home and my property was heavily carpeted with new leaves. Fallen leaves happen. Property owners and city workers can't just stand around waiting for the leaves to fall to get them right away. Property owners have to go to work to get income to pay the taxes to pay the city workers. City workers have to rotate between parks to rake leaves.

I'm not willing to pay the kind of taxes to have workers at each park to rake fallen leaves, then stand around that park waiting to rake more leaves to fall.

LOL at a rich first-world

By Triggered
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 10:59am

LOL at a rich first-world country where we let people starve and die on our streets. A country that has sat by and watched this virus destroy small businesses and throw countless individuals into financial turmoil because we refuse to provide support (beyond that amazingly generous one-time $1200). A country that values money over human life. But please, Bob, tell me more about what "hardly seems unreasonable" to expect from the government of a "rich first-world country".

The leaves are still falling

By Lmo
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 11:11am

The leaves are still falling and it has been windy.

You may have noticed that

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 11:15am

You may have noticed that resources are a bit stretched due to the pandemic.

Any time someone says "I pay my taxes and..."

By Section77
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 1:35pm

You know the next thing they say will be complete nonsense. You are the grown-up now. You can't throw hissy-fits over fallen leaves and shoveling your front walk after it snows. Welcome to adulthood.

Come on now, BannedFromTheRoxy.

By mplo
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 11:33am

Fallen leaves that remain on the cement are quite slippery. The city should remove them, since it's a public city park.

Facts

By Nicole M Desmond
Sun, 11/15/2020 - 11:14pm

I almost busted my rump in a pile the other day

Wondering the same

By anon
Sun, 11/15/2020 - 11:41pm

Today was the first time in over 40 years living in the city, where I wondered about all these leaves on city streets. They are everywhere! And unfortunately not only are they a slip hazard, but worse, they are great at hiding used discarded needles.

And dog crap

By Wiffleball
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 8:51am

As a kid I loved the sound of shuffling through leaves on the sidewalk—Halloween in a sound bite. But now I've lived in the city too long and know that the same people who use snow as a way to get out of cleaning up after their yapping shit factory use leaves the same way.

Not on purpose

By ElizaLeila
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 9:21am

Not on purpose to get out of picking up after them. At least - when we had our dogs years ago.

Ours preferred a pile of leaves to poop in. I did my damnedest to spot where they went and I always picked up bunches of leaves with the poop to try and get everything.

In fact, on one group list I was on, other owners saved leaves in their yards to help convince their pups to go quickly during the cold winters (in their own yards). Some dogs are weird.

My last face plant was

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 12:51pm

My last face plant was slipping on previously stepped on, and therefore smeared, dog crap on the sidewalk.

On My Way

By In The Know
Sun, 11/15/2020 - 11:42pm

Have no fear. I will be on my way first thing in the morning with 10 people with high-power, gas-powered, leaf blowers. We'll just push those all the way down the street passed the home and turn towards the nearest city collection yard and keep going until we get there.

Of course the noise level will be about 200 decibels but hey, they want the leaves outta there, right? I mean, the darn trees don't even have all of the leaves down yet.

Where are these people coming from? They definitely were not born in New England.

Or

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 7:58am

you can be like one of my neighbors who just blows all his leaves out into the middle of street so that they can go into everyone else's yards and then they have to be the ones to rake them up.

A week ago in our

By Rob
Sun, 11/15/2020 - 11:43pm

A week ago in our neighborhood, we had 1/4 of trees/limbs bare (at absolute most), 1/4 with leaves turning red/yellow/gold, and 1/2 with green leaves. The cold the last four days brought down over half of the remaining.
That's a very short time for a lot of leaves. Even if it wasn't over a weekend, how many employees does the complainant think the City has to conceivably assign to leaf removal?

Yup. We just had a LOT of

By cden4
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 9:57am

Yup. We just had a LOT of leaves drop within a very short period of time. The City cannot clean them all up instantly.

Classic city dwellers...

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 1:50am

One moment, they complain about not getting access to nature and all the good it supposedly entails. The next moment, they complain about the slightest inconvenience caused by nature...

You can't have it both ways.

You know what they say about assumptions

By Irie
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 8:29am

I wonder who is the "they" you are talking about.

Most people love nature. Some people might be concerned about the hazard of wet leaves.

Consider elderly, visually or otherwise disabled neighbors trying to walk to their bus stop. But I suspect that you are referring to a very particular "they".

Classic city dwellers know

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 9:29am

Classic city dwellers know that there are tons of discarded needles around the city now a days. Guess where I spotted some the other day? In a pile of leaves.

Not true

By Irie
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 11:13am

Not true. You can walk all over the city and not see one. However, in some areas this is a large problem.

What you think you see and focus on tells a lot.

There are more flowers and trees than needles.

Archaeo-linguistics

By Hysterical Gram...
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 12:59pm

Believe it or not, "nowadays" is one word, not three.

Although, putting on my historical hat, I could construct a conversation between two serf Scotsmen of the middle ages that employs it as three words:

"Aye, Wamba," Gurth said. "We go out at divers times... now a days, now a nights."

OK, I borrowed the serfs, I know Ivanhoe didn't take place in Scotland. It's okay, I have a poetic license stashed in my drawer somewhere around here... or in my drawers perhaps, let me check...

Was it the same person?

By Tim Mc.
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 12:07pm

Do you know that this person likes getting access to nature?

Or are you combining things you've heard from multiple people?

Obviously it's the same person

By Scratchie
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 3:26pm

This anonymous troll's self-righteous virtue signaling wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

Why can't oak trees be more

By Refugee
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 6:31am

Why can't oak trees be more like maple trees, and drop their leaves in September.

Deciduous Forest Diversity

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 7:45am

Different rates of leaf litter decomposition provide soil nutrients over a longer period of time. Just one part of the entire complex system.

lol

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 11:39am

our maple trees are the only ones to still have their leaves. everything else is bare.

I'm sending some cheese to go

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 7:10am

I'm sending some cheese to go with that whine.

Damn trees . Why can't they

By Gary
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 3:31pm

Damn trees . Why can't they just cut them down and pave everything.

Form a Friends Group

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 7:23am

Get a few neighbors together, bring some rakes and brown leaf bags, and spend an hour as a group performing a socially distant, civically engaged community service.

Yes, bring rakes.

By Lee
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 8:09am

Don’t bring leaf blowers.

lol

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 2:36pm

yup, bring rakes so it can take longer, people will get more frustrated, and then they'll rake too aggressively and rip up any grass or plants that should not be disturbed.

yes, leaf blowers generate noise, but they also do a better job -- and much faster.

Bring puncture proof gloves.

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 9:27am

Bring puncture proof gloves.

That’s enabling misbehavior

By Bob Leponge
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 9:36am

Organizing volunteers to do the work that we have already paid the city to do, simply enables and encourages the city to further shirk its responsibilities.

Go down to the Methadone Mile

By anon
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 11:29am

with a van and a stack of $20's. One van load of people could rake the park in an hour. 311 filer will underwrite the transaction.

Not a good idea! Taxes pay the city to do it.

By mplo
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 2:36pm

Therefore, the city should take care of it.

Thanks

By Scratchie
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 3:27pm

I was waiting for some clown to suggest that citizens should volunteer to do the work their taxes should be paying for. Thanks for not letting me down.

Just like a Swiss fucking watch...

C'mon, Adam.

By J.R. Dobbs
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 8:05am

You just post these for the lulz donchya?

Autumn Leaves

By The Fox 915
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 8:27am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnp58oepHUQ

Because kids hate playing in the leaves?

By Waquiot
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 9:55am

Honestly, if this was a December compliant, I'd definitely see the point, and they may have just been pointing out to the Parks people that they should get out at some point to clear the fallen foliage.

If they could just cut down

By Paul Bunyan
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 10:14am

If they could just cut down all the trees, there wouldn’t be a leaf problem!

As others have noted, we had

By brianjdamico
Mon, 11/16/2020 - 10:27am

As others have noted, we had a lot of the leaves fall in the past week.

Last Sunday afternoon, I did my whole yard. By the time I came home from work on Tuesday, there wasn't an inch of driveway or lawn that wasn't covered by leaves. If I had had the time on Veterans Day, I would have absolutely done them again then, but I didn't have time. I cleared the yard yesterday and it was easily twice as much work as it had been just 7 days before.

Based on a completely unscientific observation, up to last Sunday, 25% of my leaves came down, and in the past week, 50% came down. Just another quarter left! Most years, I'm dealing with a substantial amount of leaves through December (assuming snow holds off) but I might have an early finish this fall.

So yeah, paved paths in public parks absolutely should be kept clear of leaves, but at the rate I saw leaves falling in the past week, they could have done them on Monday and the path would have been covered again on Tuesday.

Citizen complaint of the day: Do something about the damn leaves

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