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More to mowing than meets the eye
“Our mowing schedule keeps us constantly busy from April through October,” says Maintenance Superintendent Tony Ledbetter. “It’s a combination of the sheer amount of roadside miles we have to maintain, the distances between unincorporated areas of the county, and a Northwest climate that really encourages plant growth.” Keeping up with the mowing is important safety work for the Roads Division. Uncontrolled vegetation can impair sightlines for drivers, and as the summer progresses the dried out weeds and grasses become a fire hazard. The maintenance section has 13 large mowers that have to be hauled out to sites on the back of a flatbed truck at the beginning of the mowing season or when they need repairs. They also have an assortment of smaller mowers, weed-eaters and hand-held equipment. Every spring, Ledbetter and his division supervisors work out a mowing plan that tries to balance safety with efficiency.
Summer is not just a time for mowing, it’s also when the maintenance section is sweeping roads, repairing ditches, re-grading gravel roads, vactoring out storm drains, prepping for roadway repaving, and patching potholes. “You can't send a mower or sweeper out willy-nilly,” says Ledbetter. “You have to make sure everything gets done without spending all of your time mobilizing and demobilizing." Since the mowing work is so labor intensive, it is costly. And, because many unincorporated roads are two-lane and narrow, the mowing operations often block traffic requiring flaggers to be present with the crew. It’s important that the work is scheduled in a route format to optimize the use of the equipment and the crew time, while minimizing disruptions for traffic. “It’s great when people call us and tell us there is a problem area somewhere in the county where the vegetation is overgrown, but they sometimes don't understand why we can't just drop everything and hop over to that spot,” says Ledbetter. “If we did that each time we got a call, we'd get totally behind schedule. “That's not to say we let things sit, though. If we have an intersection or sightline that’s being blocked and the mower isn't scheduled right away, we'll get the weed-eaters on the worst part until we get back with the big mower.” To report a problem on a county road, call (206) 296-8100, or send an email. |
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