Getting things done

One of the stories I heard on my short drive home tonight was one on NPR about the book "Getting Things Done." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19105832

Being a manager at any level is about getting things done and any tips you can learn to be better at it is worth the time. NPR has an audio clip of the story they ran that you can listen to as well.

Hey, it is just over 4 minutes. You can stop and listen at least that long!

Street Sweeping

I was talking with Steve Millett today about today's street department activity. He was working at sweeping the streets.

It is a normal task for this time of year. They are spending their time picking up the sand that was spread during our earlier snow and ice storms. If you didn't know, we purchased a new sweeper last summer. It does a great job. Since the curbs in Hillsboro are not the same from block to block, the operator has to adjust the brooms for each block. It is one of the things that help us clean properly.

Steve mentioned today that cleaning in the spring is more difficult than other times because we still have some leaves in the curbs. He has been sweeping each block up to four times to get the cleaning done due to the matted leaves and accumulated dirt/sand.

As we move into Spring expect to see us "spiff" up the town and get rid of the vestiges of winter. Oops, the weather forecast has flurries predicted tonight. Maybe there will be some more sweeping after the scooping!

A need to Brag

I came in to work this morning with snow dragging under my car as I backed out of the drive way onto a freshly plowed street.

I have the pleasure of working with some very fine street crew workers here as well as Concordia, Baldwin City and Jerome, Idaho who clear our streets so we can get around. (These are towns where I worked that had regular snow fall.)

To get ahead of the traffic means they had to start pretty early. Key to doing a good job and getting downtown ready for business is grading before traffic starts to pack the snow down.

Here in Hillsboro, we are starting to pay attention to streets again after a period of ignoring them. The time between John Unruh and Dale Dalke has been stressful on the street infrastructure. We will be paying for it for awhile. In the meantime Dale and the crew of Steve Millett and Lance Booker will be working hard to make our driving experiences better.

While I am remembering folks, Ron and Jim in Concordia, Bill in Baldwin City and John in Jerome - you guys rock!