By Jessica Mathews/News@whmi.com


The public perception of the City keeping up with lawn and property maintainenance was raised during Monday night’s virtual Howell City Council meeting.

Interim City Manager Erv Suida informed Council during a recent virtual meeting that the City has been out mowing grass and doing street sweeping. He assured Council that those are all within the Governor’s executive order and the City is mowing its own property – not hiring any contractors or landscapers – and the street sweeping is critical to storm water infrastructure. Suida said staff is answering questions as they come but he wanted to make sure Council was armed with that information. Mayor Pro-Tem Steve Manor raised concerns about public image and questioned the implications of stopping such services. He initially requested the City stop but later conceded. It was noted there would be a significant cost to catch up later. Suida said there’s around 67 acres being maintained including cemeteries and city-owned properties. He said some of the work around tombstones and grave markers is not easy mowing and it would probably take around three weeks to catch up to a normal mow if the City paused operations for two weeks. Suida said it would result in excessive wear on machines mowing grass that high and take longer, saying they’re already having a hard time because they can’t hire part-timers and as soon as the order was lifted, it would cripple the operation.

Councilman Randy Greene said there are arguments on both sides of the coin and cautioned there would probably be a lot of others concerned if the city didn’t mow. He felt it’s the City’s property and it should be taken care of – adding they should try to portray best possible image in tough times and do what they can to take care of things while there’s time to do it.

Retiring Police Chief George Basar commented that the discussion of image and optics is a separate discussion and a council decision but he was on several conference calls and the issue of lawn mowing comes up. Basar said individual residents are allowed permitted to mow their own lawns and could even have a kid in the neighborhood come over to mow, so long as there aren’t commercial companies or individuals doing things for hire. Basar noted there’s also a public safety component involved as far as control of rodents, mosquitoes and things that that go with unkempt lawns.

Suida noted the City has also been fielding calls about employees being paired up or seen driving together in vehicles. He said a lot of jobs for safety reasons and state regulations require two people but they are keeping those two people working together. It was noted the City has implemented unique scheduling and different shifts within each department to keep everyone safe. Suida said it seems to be working well; they are still a healthy City and only had one close call. It was also stated that employees have needed personal protective equipment and sanitation stations that are readily available.