EVERETT – Peggy Claflin said the brush is so overgrown at an intersection on busy 19th Avenue SE that she wonders when someone will slam into her as she tries to make a left turn off her side street.
“If you’re in a low car, you can’t see traffic coming from the north,” Claflin said as she gestured toward a clump of tall weeds and grass at Lake Heights Drive and 19th Avenue SE, across from Silver Lake. “When you’re making a left turn, you have to be really fast.”
Claflin’s husband, Ken, said he called the city Public Works Department more than a month ago to complain about the brush.
When no one arrived by July 26, Peggy Claflin called again. On Friday, she called yet again. She said a public works employee told her the delay was caused by budget cuts made in the spring.
Claflin said she has called public works each of the past five years to get someone to cut the brush. “They’d be out here within a few days,” she said.
Public utilities director Tom Thetford said a crew is scheduled to be cutting brush in the Silver Lake area today and will chop down the vegetation that bothers the Claflins.
Budget cuts had nothing to do with the delay, he said. There normally are only two brush-cutting machines to cover the entire city, and for three weeks one was sidelined for repairs.
Unless there are a several sight-line problems, the city usually does several brush-cuttings at a time in one area, he said. The 6-foot-wide cutting machines are attached to tractors that travel at only 5 mph, and it’s not efficient to immediately respond to each complaint if they’re in different parts of the city, he said.
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
