When Winter Storm Gia hit Celeste Aronoff’s neighborhood in northern Overland Park, it snapped two massive branches from one of the trees in her family’s yard.
As clean up efforts from the storm got underway, Aronoff and her neighbors were struggling to decide how to proceed.
“There are large limbs and trees down everywhere,” she said. “The idea that most of us are equipped to manage this on our own seems kind of ludicrous…We just keep joking about getting everything in my Prius.”
Aronoff isn’t the only Overland Park resident irked by the city’s decision to set up drop off sites for storm debris instead of arranging for a curbside collection, and many other cities in the Shawnee Mission area have done. Overland Park’s neighboring cities of Leawood, Prairie Village, Mission and Roeland Park, for example, are all offering special curbside pick ups.
But, say Overland Park officials, the cost of arranging such an effort in a city the size of Overland Park would be considerable — and not every part of the city was hit as hard as the northern neighborhoods.
(Read more: Prairie Village Post – Neighborhood news and events for Prairie Village, Fairway, Mission Hills)