Stan Geiger

Public Safety v. Mowing Grass

In Tulsa at present, there is a great debate going on concerning a budget battle between the City Council and Kat Taylor. The argument seems to have boiled down to money for police and fire or money for mowing grass and weeds.

Police and fired advocates won out.

I have seen good points made on both sides of the debate. There is duplicity in my opinion on the matter. On that I might comment further at another time. But, for now, I'd like to condemn the minimizing of the value of mowing. Keeping the grass and weeds down is about more than making the city look better. Keeping grass and weeds mowed, in fact, goes to public safety.

Tall grass and weeds, for example, can create visibility problems at certain intersections. Maybe not for the people that drive those gigantic pickups and SUVS I can't see around, but for people like me in the short cars. Hampered visibility at intersections can cause accidents.

How about varmint control?

I'm pretty sure if I owned a vacant lot in a neighborhood, city code would require me to keep it mowed. Why is that? Aesthetics? Partly perhaps. But I imagine it mostly has to do with not providing a haven for rats, mice, snakes, fleas, ticks and such.

Lastly, I would point out that letting the grass and weeds go increases fire danger.

Imagine you've got burned-out grass and weeds along an expressway that stand two feet tall. It's August, 105 degrees, it hasn't rained in weeks, and the wind is whipping through town at gusts of 40 miles per hour. It's not too hard to get your head around that scenario in these parts.

And then some idiot tosses a lit cigarette butt out of his car window. Boom, you've got a grass fire that could easily turn into a wildfire that could find itself to your house and burn it to the ground.

If the grass and weeds are kept cropped, grass fires are still possible. But with less fuel available they can more easily be contained and snuffed out.

The issue---if you'll pardon the pun---isn't cut and dried.

There is a lot of parochialism involved in the current debate. And sometimes you have to cut through some fat to get to the meat.

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