Last year I heard an unusually high number (at least in my opinion) of concerns expressed by citizens about the aesthetic look of our roads in town. Not that a road will ever look pretty, but there are things that can be done to improve the appearance of our streets, highways, and bridges.
One of the most common observations that citizens shared with me was their distaste for seeing weeds growing in the cracks and expansion joints of concrete medians. I’ll have to admit that this one bugs me a bit too.
So during the very early spring I put this challenge to my Public Works Department staff: What can we do to control the growth of weeds in the medians at a reasonable cost and without adding any new staff.
They did it.
City staff reached out to Hennepin County and got some help from them. They also put together a plan to get ICWC workers (minimum security prisoners doing community service work) to do some of the labor. While this task sounds simple, it’s not. Putting people, trucks, and chemicals in the medians of roads where drivers are zipping by just a few feet away from them at 65 mph while they are talking on their cell phones, eating their lunch, and shaving all at the same time. How’d you like to be the guy in the median spraying weeds with that hazard on both sides of you? No thanks for me.
Here’s what it looks like when you line up all the trucks, traffic control, and workers it takes to take on this task:
This operation involved 12 people, 6 trucks, and 80 hours of labor to apply about $200 of weed killing chemicals.
Those pesky weeds – we showed’em!
