CLINTON — City workers have been especially busy lately putting up Christmas lights and decorations, brush and leaf pick up, fixing water main leaks and a host of other projects.  If there’s any message the city wants to get out to the public right now, it’s “be patient.”

Public works supervisor Steve Lobb stressed during Monday’s city council meeting that residents need to be patient when it comes to leaf and brush pick up.  The recent snowfall slowed those projects while city personnel manned plows to clean the streets.

But, the work will get completed, Lobb said.

“I call it a lot of snow for a November, and it did hamper the leaf work,” Lobb said.  “But, we are going at it as hard as we can.”

A substantial snow fall on Thursday and Friday of last week slowed progress on leaf and brush pick up.  

“But, we’re averaging about 200 cubic yards a day when we’re out running,” Lobb said.

He said workers were out on Monday and would stay with it as long as leaves weren’t frozen to the ground or snow covered.

Leaves have been pretty wet this week, which makes it more difficult for the city equipment to vacuum them.

“I know folks don’t like the leaves out there for very long; neither do we.”

Crews haven’t been able to follow the normal zone pattern listed on the city’s website because of the early winter weather, so they’ve concentrated on areas that could be worked now.

They plan to work on Friday in order to catch up.

In other business, commissioner John Wise confirmed how busy city workers had been.

“They had something like four (water main) leaks is six days,” he said.  “The water plant itself had some issues; a couple of motors burned out.”

At about 70 percent of new water meters installed so far in the city, Wise said not all electronic features of the new system are yet fully operational.

He cited an issue in which the computer monitoring the system failed to detect a leak at a local home.  The system is designed to detect leaks to reduce major losses of water.

“But, it’s still only being installed,” Wise said.  

He said, as with any such new system, there were still glitches to be solved.  The system had detected some leaks quickly, some not so quick.

“I want the public to understand it’s still a work in progress,” Wise said.  ‘We aren’t done yet.”