HASSO HERING

We’re looking south on the Periwinkle Bikepath from 21st Avenue on Wednesday afternoon.

A reader’s email sent me on a mission along Albany’s Periwinkle Bikepath on Wednesday. Riding the bike on a paved trail away from traffic in springtime is a tough job, I know, but somebody has to do it.

Here’s the email:

“I have two questions regarding the Periwinkle Pathway.
1.  What happened to all the ‘mama ducks’ from Queen to the elementary school?
2.  Why aren’t they doing any trimming of the pathway? If it’s to discourage the homeless, it isn’t working. You can see that some are using the tall grass for sleeping. On Sunday the grass came up to my shoulders and I’m five foot two. What happened to the parks maintenance crew?”

So, I started south on the path from Queen and Geary. As far as I could see, nothing had happened to any ducks. A bunch of them were on the bank of the creek and on the lawn of the apartments on the east side, as usual, along with countless little ducklings. They were having an afternoon siesta and were not bothered by somebody passing by.

The grass? Yes, it was pretty tall. It looked like ryegrass to me, but I could be wrong.  This time of the spring, that stuff does get two or three feet tall.

Along some stretches, the path almost disappeared, but not quite. Riding between these thickets of grass waving in the wind — very pleasant, really.

No, I didn’t see anyone sleeping in the tall grass.

“What happened to parks maintenance?” I’ll ask, but I expect the answer is that Albany has many parks and trails, too many for the parks staff to stay on top of in the spring when everything grows like crazy. (See the actual answer below.)

On the section of the Periwinkle Bikepath north of Queen, though, a Linn County sheriff’s work crew had been doing a thorough job whacking away at the grass and weeds. The path was clear all the way north to Lowe’s.

The people in that crew told me they would continue, probably on Thursday, on the section south of Queen. I thanked them for what they had already done, and I’m guessing the walls of tall grass will shortly be gone all the way to Periwinkle Park. (hh)

The sheriff’s crew was taking a rest break before finishing the cleanup on the path just north of Queen.

Postscript: It was as I had suspected. Here’s the response from  Rick Barnett, Albany parks and facilities maintenance manager:

 We are always behind because things are growing and people need a variety of services from us. This year has been bumpy. We always catch up by the first of July.

Grass – It has gotten away from us some this year. It grew really well and we have been down staffing for a number of reasons. We have at times been down as many as 3 regular, skilled staff members. That situation is improving. We have a tractor and flail scheduled today to get grass off the path and the work crew scheduled extra days to catch us up.

Park Maintenance Crew – We have a total of 8 regular staff (not including me) and ramp up for the summer with about 8 additional seasonal workers and as they are available, the sheriff’s crew.

With that, we run a custodial and restroom cleaning crew 7 days a week, plant and take care of plants and flowers around town, provide baseball and softball field maintenance, take care of trees , lots of maintenance tasks and provide services to a variety of park users.

We are also challenged in a couple of other areas.

◊ Right now graffiti is as bad as I have ever seen it. It is probably just one or a few very active taggers, but 5 minutes of tagging might take us 8 hours to clean up.  

◊ People camping in parks and natural areas (and leaving a mess) is increasingly challenging. As the weather gets better, things dry out and we get past the spring time we will be more effective in this clean up.                       

We are working with the police department to do a cleanup in the area between Eads {ark and Simpson Park next Wednesday. The last cleanup we did in that area netted 5 tons of garbage.  

We appreciate the ability to serve our community and apologize for our slowness this season. As always if people see problems in the park, we want to know. We manage over 900 acres and appreciate the public’s help letting us know when they see things that aren’t what they should be.   They can send us an email through the “Report a park maintenance issue” tab on the City’s website or contact our front desk at (541) 917-7777.  Either way we get the message fairly quickly.

Finally, and I hate to promise in case anything comes up but the ever popular Waverly Duck is scheduled to be back in the water next week.