Actually, in Bluffton, the Village Council was part of the problem. The village had maintained a system of alleys between streets in many residential areas, and the power company, and telephone company, and cable company used these alleys. That was nice because that meant the poles and wires were predominantly behind the houses and pretty much out of sight.
But the water, sewer, and gas lines were run underneath the streets rather than the alleys. So the village was more or less not using many of the alleys and viewed maintenance of the alleys as an unnecessary expense. Therefore, when homeowners on a particular block requested that the village "vacate the alley" essentially giving the homeowners on both sides an extra 10 feet of lawn (half of a 20-foot alley), the village was only too happy to give the alley to the homeowners. (Never mind the power, telephone, and cable poles that just got marooned.)
So you may find a disagreement as to what party actually needs to spend the money to maintain the alleys and easements and right-of-ways. In our case the village owned the alleys, and the power company etc. used the alleys without charge, and the village did not use many of them, so the village essentially said, "We don't want them anymore."
Yes, that was a dumb, dumb, dumb thing to do, but village, town, and city elected officials seem pretty good at doing dumb things.
Also, it may be easy for people with access to chain saws, and who are in good health, to get branches to the curb. But many people can't do it, and once these are placed at the curb then what? Cities and towns around here didn't have any place to put the stuff, and the Ohio-EPA prohibited them from burning it. Lima, the closest city to me, (15 miles away and 50,000 to 100,00 people depending on how far you go out) had several mountains of branches. I mean it... these were very huge piles... nearly unbelievable piles.
There is also the money factor. Who pays all the overtime for the village crews to collect that stuff and assemble the mountain? If they don't do it with overtime, then it takes a very long time.
Of course this is nothing compared what people are going through in Haiti, but the cost and the logistics of ice-storm clean-up and future planning are not trivial.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270