As many of our regular readers may recall, each fall the leaf crews come down my street and leave behind some damage. My lawn abuts the street without the benefit of a curb, and for four years running the leaf crews have managed to leave ruts in my lawn.
Last fall it happened again, as you can from this picture.
As I’ve done in the past, last year I contacted Gina Kostoff, Fort Wayne Board of Public Works Manager. As always, a crew is sent out. Today they arrived.
At first, the truck wandered back and forth, slowly trying to figure out which house was mine. The stopped in front of my house at three separate spots, never once looking at the sign on the mailbox with the numbers of my house and an arrow pointing across the street. They left. They came back.
A female street department worker who was driving the truck hopped out to survey the damage. A landscape expert I suspect, as she decided it really wasn’t a big deal. She stomped on the ruts a few times, all the while calling it in to dispatch. I could imagine the conversation.
Worker: “Dispatch, this guy must be kidding. I can smush these ruts down with my feet.” Dispatcher: “Yeah, it’s that annoying blogger guy. Screw him and his lawn.” Worker: “I’m outta here, over and out.“
Am I making a big deal out of nothing? Not in my humble opinion. It’s pretty annoying having to navigate the mower in and out and around the ruts. The first year I actually made the repairs myself. It only took about an hour and a load of dirt from the back yard and a little grass seed. When it happened the second year, I decided to call it in.
So this morning, I contacted Miss Kostoff via email and she immediately replied.
Thanks for the pictures, Dan. I will have our Street Commissioner take a look at the situation and one of us will be happy to get back to you either later today or the first part of next week.
Gina
We need more employees like Gina at city hall.
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Dan:
Wow…your place is starting to look like MY place…and that's not a real "compliment"…
I've also got "ruts" along the berm, but it's mainly due to asshole drunks that travel our street which the FWPD can't seem to catch (after all these years)…wonder WHY?
Good luck, in any event. AT least YOU have someone who LISTENS.
Thats a bummer. I have had pretty good luck in the past two weeks with calling in SE side alleys via 311… I called in and the lady said, they are working on potholes now and will move on to alleys next. I took it as a brush off at the time, but a week later they showed up and spent nearly an hour regrading one of the offending alleys.
The FWPD seems to catch a lot of drunks. Three times as many arrested by FWPD than the the city of Indianapolis. I'd say they are doing their job.