Leetonia utility crew busy vacuuming village leaves
By LARRY SHIELDSArticle Photos
LEETONIA - It's a two-month chore for utility crews to vacuum the village leaves, said Butch Donnalley, superintendent of utilities on Wednesday.
He likes having the village clean by Christmas, but that depends on the weather, he said, adding they usually start by the end of October.
Village Administrator Gary Phillips said residents can bag their leaves if they want, but most rake them to the curb.
Phillips said with the village's large senior citizen population vacuuming is preferred.
"It's a service," he said, "what else are we here for?"
He said it didn't matter if there were 400 or 4,000 seniors.
The village uses a 22-year-old vac manufactured by American Road Machinery, Inc. in Minerva and while Phillips and Donnalley would like a new one and are working toward it, the old one keeps chugging along.
Donnalley said it's good having the manufacturer so close because "I can deal directly with them and don't have to go through a supplier."
He said they were hoping to make more money during a recent village equipment auction to put toward a new vac.
He has an eye on a new $17,000 diesel 4-cylinder vac with an automatic clutch that runs at a set speed so it doesn't have to be revved up when thick or wet clumps of leaves are fed into it like with the current gas-powered vac.
"Turn it on in the morning and leave it," he said, explaining that bagged leaves are picked up early in the morning and then a crew assembled, "at least four guys" to vac the rest of the day.
When leaves are wet or snowpacked Donnalley said, "It's a lot more frustrating. It really hampers the operation."
Donnalley said Leetonians want their leaves vacuumed.
"If we did bag I think half the residents wouldn't do it," he said, "then they'd be plugging up catch basins because a lot of people would mulch them and blow them into the street.
"You know where they end up, and then when we plow snow we wind up with a big pile of leaves in front of us."
The crews seem to prefer vacuuming too, he said.
"I think they'd rather vac 'em up because it's a real pain cutting bags open and vacuuming them," he said, explaining that is something they would have to do before delivering them to the farmers who want them.
"I would just as soon vacuum them. A lot of times we'll break open bags and vac them. It's hard to deal with bags and you have to recycle the plastic.
"And, when the whole system's working, we can get a lot more leaves in a day of vacuuming. It doesn't take long to fill a dump truck with bags."
A four-man crew is used, but Donnalley would prefer six with a truck driver, one on the blower hose, one raking leaves to the blower, two in front raking leaves down and one with a leaf blower doing cleaning up the path.
"We could really go."
Donnalley keeps records for the tree commission and said that last year they collected 30 1-ton dump truck loads of bagged leaves and 50 leaf truck loads (vacuumed). He said a leaf truck load equals four regular dump truck loads.
This year crews are using a new truck that was converted into a leaf vac machine. Donnalley said it started out at $8,000 as a 24-foot Ryder rental box truck and another $12,000 worth of conversion equipment for the fabricated top, grain bed, hitch, safety lights and all the accessories, brought the total to $20,000.
The leaf vac itself received a new $900 clutch and $600 impeller along with a newly fabricated top-chute connecting the blower to the truck.
In 2007, the old truck used 338 gallons and the leaf vac used 370.9 gallons, Donnalley said, adding the total fuel cost was $1,640.
There were 315 estimated man hours in vacuuming and 13.2 hours picking up bags for an estimated employee cost of $10,639.
Donnalley said the village also uses community service workers.
Phillips said from an administrative standpoint it just makes sense. He understands the cost and says they're working toward a new machine, but serving the residents is why they exist.
"That's why we're here," Phillips said, adding the public relations and good-will aspects can't be underestimated.
"When people hear this machine coming, they get out and rake," Donnalley said, adding, "vacuuming wins hands down."
Larry Shields can be reached at lshields@salemnews.net
