Often overlooked, keeping public lawns, medians and roadsides mowed is a costly chore and a growing part of city, county, state and school budgets as gas prices and equipment costs rise. While some of the work is contracted out to private companies, some is done in-house. In both cases, the reasoning is it’s more cost-efficient, either due to a lack of employees or a lack of equipment.

“It’s like painting a large bridge when you get to one end it’s time to start back at the other end,” said Dr. James Price. “It’s a never-ending cycle.”

The Vicksburg Warren School District spends an estimated $1,000-a-day mowing grass, Price said. It takes a full-time crew of six to keep all the school yards, schoolmaintained sports fields and school district properties mowed. There’s no getting around the costs, said Price, and the best the district can do is try to keep all the grass trimmed as efficiently as possible.

James Granger of Scallions’ trims shrubs downtown(Joshua Corban * The Vicksburg Post)

Good equipment equals efficiency when it comes to mowing grass. The school district purchased four commercial mowers years ago to replace the old tractorhitched, pull behind mowers. The riding mowers cost about $10,000 each, but Price said the investment has been a good one.

“It used to take 10 to 12 men the same amount of time to do what a crew of six guys is doing for us now,” he said. “We have it down to an art form.”

Price said even with skyrocketing fuel and equipment costs, he will continue to have the grass mowed by staff members as long as he continues to have good maintenance employees.

“It’s not cost-efficient for us to contract the work out. We have the shops to store and maintain the equipment, and we have experienced people to do the job,” he said.

Jeff Richardson, landscape architect for the city of Vicksburg, said much of the mowing responsibilities of the city are contracted out because the city doesn’t own the wide range of equipment necessary to efficiently complete all the varied mowing and trimming tasks in Vicksburg.

For example, he points out mowing the city-owned Cedar Hill Cemetery and residential lots cleared in former flood buyout programs