Who mows your footpath?

[pmrid]

A couple of weeks ago, I had a collapse while trying to mow my footpath. I have a corner block - so a double-length of council's grass. A neighbor helped me home and I was OK after a bit of a lie-down. As someone who has had a quadruple heart bypass and also a number of crushed vertebrae in the lower spine, this collapse was a warning I could no longer ignore. So I have gone back to the bloke who used to mow my lawn and put myself back on his list.

I had decided to do it myself because the cost was getting too much - I found I was paying more to mow the footpath than I pay Council in rates. A bit ironic.

SO I decided to do some investigating into the question of mowing footpaths. I wrote to my local Councillor in the hope of a rational reply. You don't get to deal directly with the Councillors (or members of parliament for that matter). You have to deal with some "assistant".

In the result, the assistant just referred my email to the Council s operations office and her response to me in the meantime was polite but unhelpful. She referred me to a bylaw which basically said council relies on owners to mow their footpaths and would only intervene in the event of health or emergency. I was mildly encouraged by this since I thought I had ticked the "heath" box fully.

I wrote back asking if there was any regulatory basis for this. She in turn replied with a link to a statute that said council inspectors could issue me with a compliance notice requiring me to mow the footpath if in their opinion it raised health and safety concerns. Failure to respond could lead to prosecution and council would mow it at my expense.

This didn't really answer the question but it did seem a bit of a dead end.

But a few days later a chap from the council came and had a chat in which he said council had not been mowing peoples footpaths for several years - notwithstanding that their own bylaws did make provision for it. Health issues did not come into the equation. The rationale was that if they did it for me - there would be an avalanche of others making a similar request.

I wrote back saying that the fact of a avalanche was - by itself - a reason for council to see that there was a problem of some size out there which they were ignoring. I don't expect any other replies but I am surprised that council can basically ignore the power their own bylaws give it.

Anyway - that's my whinge for the day but I would like to ask IIS members out there what their own Shire Council does.

[Leo.G]

Where I am I have insisted in the past two rental places the council did it and they did. One was a corner block with more council grass than my yard. Now I have an old ride on I bought cheap and fixed up so it's not a major problem. I do however have several old ladies living in the near area and they get council to mow theirs, it takes some arguing though.
End of the day it is council land and if they can fine you for parking on it (which they do in nearly every state as far as I know), they can mow it too.
As for setting a precedent, that's their problem.
They do mow the parks or do they make neighbours do that too?
They have gardeners in full time employ.


EDIT:
Sadly Peter we are living in very different times. As a kid I'd have been sent over with a mower to do not only your front area but the whole yard and I'd smile the whole time. We looked after the older members of the community and the youth both understood and respected this upbringing and many would offer to do it free to assist if they saw you out the front pushing a mower.
Sadly respect for others is a long lost principle, we are now living in the age of entitlement.

[AndyG]

For some unknown reason, I find this thread of interest. Whilst the facts say otherwise, I've never considered the footpath "Council Land". I've always considered the footpath part of my home and a reflection on my own efforts to keep things clean.

I live in a run down, lower socio-economic area. Lots of housing commission, many homes with long grass all the way to their front door. There could be much to say on that, but I won't.

I find mowing a relaxing activity, providing mild excercise and time to think. As such, I mow my yard, my footpath, the next door's footpath, and that of nieghbour across the road and the opposite corner too. Including edging, and spraying gutter weeds, it's about 2 hours give or take.

Some have come out to say thankyou. Others haven't said a word. My nieghbour next door has been of such amazing help over the last decade - I feel quite in his debt. He grew up in London and detests the idea of mowing, so it works out for both of us.

My Wife thinks I'm an idiot and compares me to Forrest Gump, mowing for free. She's Japanese, and anyone who's been there knows how clean those neighbourhoods can be. Often there are groups of retired/disabled/unemployed people who voluntarily look after the streets, parks and council land. Their councils provide tools, a shed, and some keys for access. Perhaps it was an inspiration.

I use a simple electric mower, charged on a timer by rooftop solar, so no appreciable costs there. I am grateful for my health and the opportunity to do this. The street from the point of my front door looks nice, and for that I am happy.

Thankyou Peter for this thread, I hope all is well for you.

[Rainmaker]

I went with pebbles for the nature strip and artificial turf for my “lawn” areas, sold the mower, edger, hedge trimmer etc, just an occasional vacuum takes care of the yard…….

[Leo.G]

Wow, you just described my place (yes, housing commission) with long grass due to health.

[Tulloch]

I have a similar issue with the Liquid Amber tree on the nature strip outside my house. It is enormous, and the branches not only encroach over my property, some of them are also directly over my house. It drops leaves and spiky seed-pods everywhere during Autumn, filling up my gutters.

I have tried on numerous occasions to get the council to reduce the height of this tree, but every time they send out an arborist to tell me that the tree is healthy and will not fall down or drop branches on me or my house. Removing branches, he said, would adversely affect the health of the tree.

We had a big storm last year, which blew down most of the very branches I was trying to have removed, landing on my son's car which was parked underneath it. When I asked the council to even up the rest of the tree since it was now "unhealthy" (to use the arborists own words), they wouldn't even consider it.

I would be more than willing to pay for a tree pruner to even up the tree, but I am not allowed under council regulations as they own the tree. Interesting that they expect us to mow their grass, but not prune their trees...

[Crater101]

I mow mine, but I believe (emphasis added 'cause I'm not legally qualified :confused2:) that the general rule of thumb has always been that your land ends at the letterbox / front fence.
I know that some individual local councils can create their own by-laws and whatnot so that may vary. In NSW there's a thing called the Inclosed Lands Protection Act 1901 (yes, it's apparently still current) which says that your lands can be "inclosed" even if you don't have a fence around them. How that works with a local council I've got no idea. I don't have a front fence, so I mow it all.
In the ACT I've seen squads of people turn up to an area and mow everything - parks, median strips, footpaths - and then disappear, but the ACT is governed differently. (I know, I know...)
Peter, it may be time to sit back and watch others do the work for you.

[DarkArts]

I've always mowed my own part of the nature strip, and weeded it, too.



As I get older, and pushing the mower seems a little harder each year, that is sounding like a very attractive proposition, especially since I hate mowing*.


[* ... because, when I was about 10 years old - as soon as I was big enough - my Dad gave me the job of mowing the 'lawn', which may seem OK, but we lived on 2.5 acres!]

[gaseous]

In response to Warren, yes in most cases your legal front property line is generally where the front fence and/or mail box is located, and everything between this and the gutter is council land. Way back when the house was first built, it may have had some timber boundary pegs at the corners to signify where this line was, but in a lot of cases these have rotted away over the years.
Unfortunately for Peter, Queensland Councils are usually wanting the owner to maintain the footpath, but will rain down hellfire on anyone messing with the street trees – significant fines can be issued if you start interfering with any trees growing on the footpath other than the lightest pruning. My mother (also in Moreton Shire Council) pays a nominal fee for Home Assist to come around and mow her lawn, etc, every few weeks. She always complains bitterly as they’re not usually the best and brightest carrying out the work and generally don’t do the job to her satisfaction, but it may be an option for Peter if he’s willing to shell out a few bucks every few weeks if the local council won’t come to the party. Hope you stay well, Peter.

[AndyG]

Sorry to hear that. If you were my neighbour, I'd mow your yard without hesitation. My neighbours are quite a polarising experience. Some would lend you a genset during a cyclone, others would threaten you with a screwdriver and steal your car. I actually have the latter on camera...




Familiar experience. My Old Man worked far away half the time. We had 5 acres with the expectation that 2-3 of that would be mowed. I just wish Dad could have afforded something better than the $50 repair shop abandoned mower - half the effort went into starting it...

[DarkArts]

Yeah, that sounds right. It was a second-hand regular pull-start Victa. I ended up with a Bjorn Borg-like right arm from starting that mower.

[OzEclipse]

Local council want nothing to do with the entire verge on the two streets bordering and leading to my and my neighbours properties. My neighbour shares the workload with me. We aren't petty about it, sometimes he does it, sometimes I do it and sometimes we do it together. Nobody keeps count.

The grass verge area that needs to be mowed around our properties is 3/4 acre (3000 sq m). If we don't mow, the grass presents a fire hazard to our properties and brings even more snakes onto our properties.

Joe

[Leo.G]

Your priority has to be safety first Joe. I guess either of you don't have a large enough property to have your own yard tractor with a slasher bigger than an average ride on?


Back in the late 90s I assisted my TAFE welding teacher relocate some silos at Quandialla at the grain corps base during summer. We also put these silos up on ground rings which meant we welded and folded up the separate sheets to make the required slope cone of 30 degrees (that's why I was there, I knew how to do that, my teacher didn't (maths USED TO BE my strong suite (I rewrote the maths for an entire module when we were told as students we had to work from samples because the book was wrong and the correct method long forgotten within the system))). We were in a near completed silo and the teacher was grinding a weld, there was a small 6mm round hole in the side near where he was grinding. ONE spark flew out of this hole and started a fire that had a lot of people panicking and grabbing anything at hand to try and get it out before it spread. Oh, the snakes, EVERYWHERE.
So hot and dry!
Even when I moved from Sydney to Young I'd spent a lot of time at my bosses south coast property, just driving going from the greenery of Sydney's southern suburbs to the hot, dry, burnt look of the region heading to Young was a real eye opener.

[OzEclipse]

Hi Leo,
I have a 44 inch zero turn ride on. It's a Gravely ZT44. A small rugged zero turn professional model, all welded cutting deck, no rolled sheet metal, 14km/hr. 44 inch was the widest cutting deck that I could buy that would fit through all the gaps and give me access to the whole yard.

My property is 3000 sq m and the outside street is another 3000 sq. If I do the whole thing inside and out on my own it takes 2hrs 15m and 6L of unleaded petrol. My yard is landscaped so that I can cut all the grass with the ride on. I don't own or have to use a hand mower to tidy up. The street verges are made up of 120m long strips so I can wind the mower up to full 14km/hr speed and get through it pretty quick.

You probably know that the grass doesn't grow through the winter unless we get a lot of rain. Grows fast in spring but once the spring rains stop, doesn't grow much in summer unless we get rain. So I only mow weekly in spring, once every 2-4 weeks in summer and autumn and not at all from May to August unless we get a warm wet winter(eg 2022).

cheers
Joe

[peter_4059]

Here's my solution. Can climb and traverse a 60 degree slope, 27 hp, 900mm wide cut and remote controlled from up to 300m.

[Leo.G]

That's a decent mower Joe and the V twin Kawasaki engines are the cream of the crop used in decent equipment, just keep the maintenance up to it (oil is cheaper than parts particularly with hydraulic drive motors from memory) and check your belts, blades and spindle bearings occasionally (if they spin free they are fine, if they seize up or shafts get bent hitting anything it can get expensive replacing the entire units-my friends own a mower shop locally and I've been called in to help out on occasion).


Here's my push mower but I'm currently having trouble with the starter (the spring broke, I got a spare used but in good condition but something is grinding and I won't use it) but never need to pull a rope:
https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/72011/victa-mayfair-help-identifying-my-new-mower.html



Peter I've seen similar remote vehicles somewhat cheap on Aliexpress in China (not sure on freight though). It looks good.

[pmrid]

Great mower! But it would be gone inside an hour if I set it to mow my footpath.

[peter_4059]

No one is going to pick this thing up while the blade is spinning :) and it weighs over 300kg.