Lexington Hills

Lexington Hills 2012 Chipping Schedule

The article and schedule below includes updates and changes since the original 2012 Mountain Network News insert.

2011 Lexington Hills Accomplishments

Drive-up: Bring cut fuel to a specific location and chipping is done on the spot.

Community Pile: Specific areas will be designated to drop off cut fuel. Chipping is done after the end date.

At Home: Chipping is done house to house. Participants must submit chipping application 1 week prior to end date.

Please follow the SCFSC checklist on the Chipping Application when preparing your piles.

Do not add additional material to piles after the end date.

It’s that time of year again to prepare for wildfire season and create 100’ of Defensible Space around your home. The FireSafe Council is offering free chipping again this spring including the SNAP program for low-income seniors and disabled to assist them with clearing their property. You will find an insert in this month’s issue of MNN, with the schedule of area programs we are offering throughout Lexington Hills on one side and a chipping application on the other side. The chipping is free and follows our regular chipping program requirements of nothing more than 8 inch diameter with piles located within 5 feet of a roadway or driveway and all cut ends facing the same direction toward where the chipper will be. Also, the piles need to be complete by the Date above, no vines or poison oak is allowed in the piles, and Drive Up chipping will only take place on the dates posted.  We do not have any funds for Sudden Oak Death (SOD) tree removals this year.

Last year there were some questions as to why chipping hadn’t taken place by a given date. For our spring chipping, we plan on taking care of requests in a given area during the timeframe listed in the schedule. We thought it might help to understand how our process works. Let’s use a Villa Del Monte (VDM) at-home chipping project as an example:

1. Turn in your chipping application by April 15th, one week before the end date listed on the schedule. If you turn in your application after the project end date, April 22nd, we may not be able to handle your application with the requests that came in on-time. We may add you to a later project but no guarantees as to when that will be.
    
2. Don’t add to the chipping pile(s) after the end date, i.e. April 22th for VDM. This is because the contractor comes to evaluate the amount of work to be done and give us a bid. If the piles increase after the contractor evaluation and bid, then we have to redo the bids. This makes for a delay for all. Remember bidding takes time.
    
3. Contractor scheduling: After bids are received and the project granted, the project then needs to get onto a contractor’s schedule. They may not be able to do the work immediately. We anticipate it may take a few days to a week to begin. For VDM, the target date for the chipping to take place is April 24th - 26th. We do our best to get the work done as soon as possible but there is a lot of work going on coincidentally and sometimes there are delays. Any changes to the chipping schedule will be posted on our website. Of course, our drive-up programs take place on the days listed with no brush collection beforehand. We appreciate your cooperation and patience in helping complete these important projects for our community.

While we have your attention, we’d like to remind you to consider other fire-safe steps including cleaning out your gutters, sweeping debris off your decks and underneath stairs, making at least 10’ of clearance around your propane tank and keeping trees at least 10’ up off your roof and sides of your house or structure.