We’ve lived in the same place in the country for a long time. For many of those years – most of them, in fact – we’ve appreciated the various services provided by our county and/or township. Road repair, ditch mowing, snow removal, and animal removal are some of the many services for which we are grateful.
During those years, we’ve had few problems with any of them, either. Occasionally it takes a long time to get our ditch mowed, but then we are the only house on our road for the time being. But up until two years ago, we had no major complaints.
Then, the winter of 2021 came and the person who runs the snow plow seemed to think that a good bit of our yard was part of the road. We were dismayed to see ruts and jagged cuts pushed several feet into our yard.
We waited until spring, raked and planted grass seed, and everything seemed okay. Figuring the person had been new, we didn’t complain to anyone. Plus, we weren’t really sure if the county plowed that particular road, or the township, so…who do we complain to?
Then this past winter arrived and it happened again! I stomped out in frustration and took several photos of our torn-up yard. It was early February and I fired off the picture with a polite email to the county, asking, first, if they are the responsible party for the snow plowing on our road. If so, I continued, we would appreciate it if the plow-operators could be a bit more careful about how far into a yard they push the scoop.
As you might expect, I received no reply. I had no idea if this meant they didn’t care, or that they weren’t responsible. But when February morphed into April, we raked and planted grass seed, and our lawn was again intact by May.
Then last week, I received an email from the county engineer. It’s mid-July and it appears he “just received” my email. He assured me that he had been out to our property and assessed it and could find no evidence of damage.
Well, duh. It makes total sense that damage to a lawn from a snow plow in February would not be evident in July. At least, not in Ohio.
I responded, politely, I might add, because my mother raised me right. I mean, I had included a picture and it was six months ago, but I didn’t mention those things. I merely pointed out that he was a bit late in assessing snow plow damage and that we’d appreciate some better training or more care from the snow plow operators. Grass seed doesn’t grow on trees (I didn’t say that either, but thought it pretty hard).
I’m going to assume that the county services will, overall, continue to be excellent. But the whole exchange, while pretty hilarious, didn’t instill confidence that we won’t be planting grass seed next spring.
our town just sent the crews around — finally to rough plow the gravel alleys we have – neighbors and I had chipped in and PAID for new gravel to stop tracking in the MUD we had – and we even had it plowed and settled down firm – they were chopping it all up and the clumps we exciting to see — we got them to stop and put our money spent BACK – but we have heard they have done even worse to others we were not around when it happened like we were!!
Good golly, Miss Molly – were is the common sense and clear thinking anymore!!!
Oh, I can feel your pain! We have lived on the same property for 54 years. We have dealt with snow plows, heavy farm equipment, trash removal trucks, cement mixers, big trucks that carry pipe lines, etc. using the front of our property to move over for someone else to pass. I think part of the reason is our neighbors on both sides of us have graveled driveways and ours is asphalt. We have had to fill in deep ruts and reseed so many times it’s pathetic!
Our mailbox has been knocked off, even completely taken out – post and all, too many times to count! I am not kidding or exaggerating! Many times it was during Halloween, but not always. After a few times of finding our mailbox stolen and someone else’s in our yard, we called the sheriff. We apologized that we called him out for such a small thing. He said, “It’s not a small thing. This is a federal offense, and we need to find the people responsible!” He later came back and told us the mailbox that was in our yard belonged to someone living west of us in another town.
Another time someone stole our mailbox and a few days they threw another one in our yard with just one number missing. We could have easily replaced that number and it would have been ours! We gave it back to the right neighbor. My husband decided the solution would be to put up a steel post that couldn’t be knocked down. That didn’t work either. One night some inebriated young people hit the post and got stuck there. The driver called his dad. Dad came to the rescue and got them unstuck. He did buy us a new mailbox, but my husband did the work of replacing it.
One day we heard a horrific crash outside. We thought someone had hit the big maple tree in front of our house. We looked out and there was a big truck laying on its side on our driveway! Oh, my. There was no movement of life. My husband headed out to the truck as I dialed 911. By the time he got there, I saw a man crawling out the passenger’s side window. We were so thankful he was not seriously injured. He not only took out our mailbox, but let’s talk about deep ruts in the front of our property!
The driver called the owner of the business and he arrived shortly after. He told us he would take care of all the property damage and replace the mailbox. He asked us what kind of mailbox would we like. My husband told him to purchase the cheapest one he could find because they don’t last long here. He not only replaced it with the best on the market at the time, but filled in all the deep ruts, reseeded, and took care of everything else needed. It was beautiful! After we had the new mailbox awhile, I got the bright idea of moving it to the other side of our driveway. Now people would have to intentionally hit our mailbox to move onto our driveway. You know what, it worked! That mailbox has remained there for several years! (knock on wood).
And then there is that Appendix C: Laws governing right-of-way, where the county can come along and take so many feet of what we think is our property. We just pay taxes on it and mow it for them. It’s not really ours. 😁