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To Bag or Not to Bag?

Leaves awaiting pickupWith Dearborn’s loose leaf collection program set to come to an end Dec. 4, there is a possibility many of us may be bagging that last batch of leaves from the front lawn.

In a city press release, Dearborn officials say this:

“The volume of leaves this year means that City crews cannot reach every street within each trash section on that trash day. It may take three weeks before the leaves on your street are picked up on your trash day.

“For instance, if you live in the Tuesday trash collection section, it may take three Tuesdays before leaves are picked up on your street.”

While the city recommends that leaves not be raked into the street until the day before your trash day or ideally until you know crews are coming to pick them up, a drive through most neighborhoods shows that most are already in the street.

To find out if your city does have a leaf collection day coming, you can call the city’s Leaf Collection Hotline at 313-943-2444 after 3 p.m. the day before your trash day. Alternatively, you may also call 313-943-2107 from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. to get an estimate of where crews are expected to be over the next several days.

Now the city doe say that to guarantee leaf pickup, the best bet is to bag your leaves and then set them out the night before trash day. While some balk at the thought of having to bag – with the amount of trees in some neighborhoods bagging leaves can result in upwards of 25 bags curbside – it is better than the days of leaf burning.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 9:49 am and is filed under Around Town. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Lovethe313

    Mow your lawn with the leaves still on them! They make great mulch!

  • Johnny Cakes

    Okay, I’m no arborist, but this explanation seems a little off to me. “High leaf volume”? Doesn’t the city still have the same trees it always had or has there been a large influx of mature trees into the community that I don’t know about?

  • oldalldayschoolmom

    I guess the election must be over..

  • Donna Hay

    Wrong Deep, used to love to rake leaves and burn them. Can’t figure out why some areas in the same district have had 2 pick-ups and others only one. They know every year that they cannot maintain a set schedule so why even bother setting one up. They would be better off just posting which area will be done the day before it actually occurs. If this gets to be too much for the city then quit picking them up from the street.

  • Donna Hay

    Johnny Cakes, they all STRESSED at the mtg. that the problem was the leaves all fell at the same time. Like your explanation much better.

  • Confused

    I think this is a City service (or lack of) that we can no longer afford. They don’t have enough people to do the job right. Save the money and let this go by the way of plowing residential sidewalks.

  • paul

    I was told that O’Reilly won’t let DPW do their job without him sticking his nose looking over there shoulders, and because of this its a sort of slow down protest on their part, to teach the big guy a lesson. He applied pressure prior to the election, however now the rules have changed..

  • kevin pal

    The leaves haven’t been touched on our block (we’re just north of Cherry Hill between Gulley and Silvery Lane), but you can bet they’ve been handled a couple times south of Cherry Hill! Closest we’ve come to service is when a hauler, two tractors and a pick-up rumbled down the street on trash day – but there was never a leaf picked-up for us.

  • LifelongDbnRes

    IF our leaves get picked up on our public service day tomorrow (for the first time–I’m not holding my breath!), then I MIGHT stop complaining. But my neighbors have diligently redone their leaves every Sunday as directed to by the city. My frustration is this–if we’re going to have this program, then I understand if we can’t get it done in 1 week, but we OUGHT to be able to get all the leaves up in 2. If we’re going to 3 weeks, I don’t care how fast the leaves fell, it’s taking too long. We won’t get two pickups if it takes 3 weeks to get to us! I love the ease of just putting them in the street, but they are a hazard when they’re there for 3 weeks!

  • emanon

    I’ve been wondering if they secretly discontinued leaf pickup after the election–they’ve yet to pick up any leaves on my block & I’m a few blocks east of Big Jack’s place. Quite a pile we’ve got going out there…looks like the drug co. reps will have to park their Lexus’ elsewhere…

  • John Higgins

    My vote is to end the program of raking into the street. In my neighborhood there is usually only one pickup all season, and it happens just before Thanksgiving. Sometimes the leaves are covered in snow. The problem is that my neighbors have been raking leaves into the street for weeks, creating problems with traffic and eliminating parking spots.

  • Anthony

    Make this the final season for raking leaves into the street.

    The service is costly. Overtime, diesel fuel, vehicle wear and tear.

    The communication is severely lacking between everyone involved for the service to be performed effectively.

    The scooping that the front-loaders are required to do to pick up the leaves, damages the streets.

    The leaves that remain, clog sewer drains. The leaves retain water in streets. When that water freezes, the ice damages the roads.

    And c’mon…I’ve seen residents rake leaves in the street when there was no pick-up scheduled (not the day before) only to see the leaves blow all over the neighborhood and get run over by traffic.

    Leaves make for excellent, free garden mulch and soil enhancement.

    The DPW people have worked hard and performed the best that they could have for street leaf pick-up. It would be good to refocus the DPW workforce on repairing & maintaining the neighborhood streets.

  • Something Smells Rotten in Dearborn

    More leaves than usual? Not in my neighborhood. With the tree ordinance not being enforced by the O’Reilly administration we have fewer trees. By the way, piles of leaves have been uncollected in my area for over 3 weeks now.

  • pdmom

    If the Council and Mayor cannot talk about leaf pick up and parking, what will they have to discuss?!! These were the two main topics of discussion at the last meeting. More leaves than usual? I thought that was odd. I don’t trust the Mayor, I tend to believe “Paul says” about the Mayor breathing down the DPWs necks. Everything I hear from city employees is that he is a micro-manager and has his nose into everything. 20 years or more between the council and Mayor….how has the city done in those 20 years? Not so good.

  • MyTwoSenseToo

    More people need to get into composting. It is done at our home and we get wonderful “FREE” dirt. Plus, you don’t have to wait for the city to pick your leaves up.

  • becki kain

    we mulched ours as well but it’s SO ridiculous of the city to say “now don’t put them out before the night before your trashday because they are a hazard” and then not pick them up for weeks!

  • oldalldayschoolmom

    I undertand leaves were picked up in the Country Club Estates neighborhood on Saturday—overtime pay?

  • dbn48124

    What amazes me is when people fill trash cans full of leaves from their backyard and then drag that to dump in the street. My street has yet to have a leaf pick up and there are piles as tall as mini vans.

  • Wanting Better for Dearborn

    A house in Dearborn Hills removed 85 trees on their lot so I think that means we have less leaves in our neighborhood.

  • packards1

    I compost and have a great garden every year. With that said, there is no way I can use all the leaves I get, I have bagged about 60 bags for pickup this year.

  • Donna Hay

    Wonder why they sent 1 truck to pick up the leaves in the street at Columbia Park??? That was the only strip they picked up on that block.

  • Darren

    I personally enjoy the leaf (street) pickup service. Its a nice thing to be able to do. Bagging leaves is not fun, but raking them in the street is a nice convenience.

  • becki kain

    they picked up the leaves on May Street today. yeah!

  • http://www.rrbo.org Julie

    I agree with the other comments regarding using leaves for mulch and compost. Some (most?) of my neighbors are obsessed with ridding their yards of every leaf, never with a rake but always with a noisy leaf blower, and then the next year dump chemicals all over their yards to keep it “healthy.” What a waste.

  • B-man

    I love when people rake the leaves into the street right after they are picked up — literally. I also love how those people who live on Snow near Rotunda just dump their leaves into the woods across the street where it says no dumping. you would think the city council member that lives right there would stop that.
    Personally, I think it is unsafe to rake them into the street and that people should just bag the leaves up.