The City Council Monday approved a bid of nearly $22,000 for a local contractor to keep the grass mowed at the city’s three trailer parks.
“It certainly seems like an awfully high amount of money to mow grass,” Mayor Gary Moore said of the bid from BDS Lawns of Kewanee.
Their bid sets the charge for the first mowing of the three properties at $8,100. Subsequent mowings would be less time-consuming and difficult, so their cost would be $1,980 each.
Assuming seven additional mowings, the cost of maintaining the lawns at the mobile home parks would come to $21,960 for the year.
Keith Edwards, the city’s community development director, said the city, under a local ordinance, cannot step in and mow a parcel of land until the grass has reached a height of at least eight inches. Since it’s not that high yet, BDS Lawns will have wait to begin the work.
The cost of the mowing falls to the city because the Chicago-area bank that holds the mortgage on Southwind Mobile Estates, Reecy’s West and Reecy’s East parks is no longer paying any expenses for the parks.
City Attorney Zac Lessard said the city could put a lien against the mobile-home properties to try to collect reimbursement for at least some of the mowing cost.
Edwards said keeping the grass mowed at the mobile home parks benefits both the people still living there and their neighbors.
“I want to make it better for them — for the people that live there, and the ones that live close to it,” he said.
The council approved the BDS Lawns bid on a 4-1 vote, with Mayor Moore dissenting.
“I just have some real strong reservations about this money,” Moore said.
In a related matter, City Manager Gary Bradley wrote in a memo to the council that one of the park residents obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) last week barring the city from shutting off her water. She demonstrated that she had been making all the payments for water service to the court-appointed receiver for the properties.
“An attempt to add other tenants to the TRO was denied by the judge,” Bradley wrote.
A hearing in the matter was scheduled for today in Henry County Circuit Court.
