Geneva crews catching up with autumn leaves

Are there still bedraggled piles of wet leaves at your curb?

The Geneva streets and fleet department has every intention of getting them picked up, despite Mother Nature's best efforts to thwart them. And they understand your pique.

In a letter to city residents posted on its Web site, streets and fleet superintendent Stephen LeMaire wrote: "We understand that people are frustrated with the leaf collection program this year."

Leaves are normally picked up in a six-week period starting Oct. 15. The town is divided into three zones, and each zone is picked up twice.

This year, leaves fell late. So the city added an extra pickup. It managed to get through the first zone, B, but then snow hit in early December and kept on coming. The trucks that are used to collect leaves are also those that are used to plow snow. Off came the vacuums, on went the plows.

Complicating matters was that, even if you wanted to bag up the leaves and pay to dispose of them, yard-waste collection ended Nov. 30.

This week, and whenever it can, the city is back out sucking up leaves. It intends to try to finish up zones A and C. If that doesn't happen the city suggests you mulch the leaves and put them around trees and shrubs, or, come March 1, bag them and pay the trash collector to haul them away.

Zone A is the area east of the Fox River; Zone C is west of the river and south of State Street. The starter zone is rotated from year to year.