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“I
am still having tree-cutting issues. I
am continuing to get calls,”
Commissioner Margaret Stinnett said
Tuesday night, citing an instance on St.
Catherine’s Drive in Staffordshire where
town electric crews cut down a cedar
tree but left another.
Stinnett said she wanted a
discussion of the town’s tree-cutting
policy on the agenda for the Sept. 19
meeting “under fix the damn problem.”
She also questioned the
appearance of downtown. “The downtown
area looks like doo-doo.”
Stinnett said she had asked
for a copy of the tree-cutting policy
but still had not received it.
In Staffordshire – where
there are no overhead lines, just
top-of-the-ground transformers in green
boxes – Stinnett said the person who
called her had tried to beautify around
the remaining cedar tree that is
apparently near a transformer box. She
had mulched and placed a bench there.
“Now the electric department has said
the bench needed to be removed,”
Stinnett said.
As for downtown, Stinnett
asked who is responsible for cutting the
grass between the sidewalks and the
streets, emptying the garbage cans and
picking up the trash.
“We have a crew that goes
out every day,” Town Manager Mark
Williams said. They check the garbage
cans every weekday morning.
Mayor Vivian Jones said she
agreed there are times when downtown is
dirty. One Saturday morning, she said,
she saw a business owner take out a bag
of garbage and put it in the curbside
garbage can.
Williams said the town has a
contract with a landscaping group to
clean the parking lots. As for the
grass, “We’ve done it in the past when
it got to be really bad.” Town crews
have also cleaned out weeds at the
underpass and around downtown. “Once we
start doing it, people assume we’re
always going to do it.”
He also said that if the
board wants the town sanitation and
street crews to take the responsibility,
“we can do it.”
During the work session, the
board also heard a report from Charles
Martin, vice chairman of the Human
Relations Council about the community
leadership meeting in March and the
issues being addressed.
The board also informally
authorized the staff to go ahead with
branding the electric department as Wake
Forest Power at a cost of $2,275 for
uniform patches, seals on the
department’s trucks and use of the logo
– the Binkley Chapel spire in black
surrounded by gold rays – on the utility
bills once the town has used the
existing stock. |
