This last weekend, Cathy and I had two of our grandsons over from Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning. We had a great time playing with them and their new toys from Christmas, taking advantage of Friday’s beautiful cold weather to sled in Memorial Park, putting together toy sailboat kits, playing games, and staying up until midnight to ring in the New Year and bang pots together.
Cathy and I are still recovering.
With the weather as cold as it is, I’d like to remind everyone to take precautions to keep your water pipes from freezing. There have been at least two homes in Weiser that experienced freezing pipes last weekend. The snow on the ground helps provide some insulation, but keeping water taps trickling keeps the water moving and moving water is less likely to freeze. So please, do yourself a favor. The water is cheap compared to frozen or busted pipes.
In City news this week, the snow crews have a request. When you are clearing your sidewalks and drive-ways, please shovel or blow the snow into your yard rather than in the street. The snow crews work hard to not just plow the snow from the middle of the road, but to remove the snow entirely. In order to remove snow in a timely manner, the workers often put in many overtime hours to complete the job. Shoveling or blowing your snow into the street just adds to the work and requires more time to clear the entire town. The additional snow placed in the streets from sidewalks and driveways increases the overtime thereby costing the city and ultimately you – as taxpayers – more for snow removal than necessary. And the crew doesn’t necessarily want the hours. So please, do your part by keeping the snow from sidewalks and driveways out of the street.
On another note, historically, Weiser has had one garbage collector in the fall, winter, and spring with a seasonal collector hired in the summer when there is increased demand (and smell.) Over the last couple of years, it was noticed that this rotation no longer met the demands of you, the residents. There have been several factors that have played into this, one of which is the fact there is no longer a recycling center in town. Another is that during the pandemic people began shopping more online and therefore discarding more cardboard.
As a response to the increased need for services, we looked at the budget and fee schedule for the Garbage Department and realized we could reasonably add one employee without increasing rates.
So, in early November the City hired Joe Mills as an additional full-time garbage collector. We have been working with Joe to train him with the trucks and bring him up to speed. He is excellent with the equipment and is working out well.
That being said, the City is planning on beginning twice-a-week garbage pickups toward the end of February. Schedules will be announced and posted on the City’s website in the Maps section. We just wanted to give you some advance warning. You may be seeing some twice-a-week pickup before then as we experiment with the routes.
Well, that’s it for this week. Hope you stay warm and dry out there – and have a good week!
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