On Monday, October 23, 2017 at 2:35:17 AM UTC-5, wrote:
This is in reference to horticultural debris removal from the
hurricane.
After Charlie, they hired private contractors who brought in 18
wheelers that could haul 100 yards of debris at a time. They had a
claw truck and a bobcat on the street making big piles from little
piles and getting it the hell out of here fast. The morons in local
government here have decided to let Lee DOT do it this time. Being the
government, they spend more time looking and scratching their ass than
picking up debris. This morning they sat in front of my house, all of
he equipment idling for over an hour while they walked around and
looked at my logs and the other stuff piles around this corner. They
never picked anything up. then they decided they would go around the
block the other way. Four hours later they were still about 10 houses
down.
I do understand this would still take a lot longer because of the
equipment they brought. They are just using a Gradall with a clamshell
bucket and 10 yard dump trucks. Let's see. 2.5 million yards, 10 yards
at a time ... a quarter of a million truck loads. No wonder they are
saying it might take until Christmas.
This looks like a WPA project except we are talking about 21st century
government workers working 7 days a week. The guys out here on Sunday
were probably averaging $70-80 an hour working double time,
A contractor with the right equipment would be faster and cheaper.

The "looking and scratching" part is dead on.

A friend of mine has an upscale tree trimming/clearing business and hires about 20 men. He has lots of equipment. He knows what he's doing.

He was a warded a contract in N.O. after Katrina. He said the govt. pay was fine IF they would have been allowed to do what they had to do, but there was so much local govt fiddling around and downtime due to red tape/ paperwork that he found himself losing money fast and pulled out of the game and won't do fed or state govt work anymore...