Friday, February 14, 2025
HomeOpinionJon RavenGrass, pothole season upon us

Grass, pothole season upon us

You know it’s Summertime in Logan when we’re getting big storms, long grass and plenty of potholes on our roads.
We aren’t alone with these challenges – other Councils are experiencing similar conditions – but with two rivers, huge road networks and more than 1000 parks in the city our contractors and maintenance crews have their work cut out of for them.
Most people wouldn’t think that potholes and long grass are related but they’re both
caused by the same thing: rain.
Council’s road crews have repaired over 24,000 potholes this year, the vast majority of that work happens after we get rain because water always finds a way. With such a wet spring, it was always going to be a record-breaking year on that front.
About 5% of those potholes were reported by residents and I just wanted to say a quick thank you to the folks who take the time to help keep our roads safe.
With the big storm last week, we had very few homes impacted, but quite a few of our roads were damaged. Maintenance crews will be working overtime in the lead up to Christmas and beyond to get those repairs completed for you.
All that rain, combined with some beautiful sunshine, means the grass growing season is
upon us too!
Last year, after the Christmas Eve storms, our Parks teams were busy doing storm clean up. This meant they weren’t available to help or mowing contractors with the surge of long grass we were facing.
At one point in February we had staff from all different parts of Council putting their hand up to hop on a ride on mower. I’m sure it was a nice change of pace for the finance gurus, facility managers and town planners to do some mowing, but I’ve spoken to the Parks Manager about how we can avoid that situation this summer.
They’ve got additional contractors on deck for this growing season and more frequent mowing during the summer months has been a practice for a long time now – but they’re going to push it further.
Let’s just keep our fingers and toes crossed that we don’t have any disasters this Christmas and that the worst thing we have to worry about is some long grass.

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