Town of Mancos officials will spray nonorganic weed control in Cottonwood and Boyle parks next week, according to a news release on the town website.
Parks department staff will spray in Cottonwood Park on Sept. 6 and in Boyle Park on Sept. 7. The parks will be closed to the public on those days. Another application of weed control likely will take place in spring 2017.
At a July 27 Board of Trustees meeting, trustees authorized parks manager Terry Jennings to work with Premier Weed Management and Consulting to spray for weeds in the parks. The cost for the two applications will be $2,837.50, according to town documents.
Foxtail and cheatgrass weeds got out of hand at Cottonwood Park. Those weeds can be harmful for dogs, and because the park is a designated off-leash dog area, trustees agreed at a meeting June 8 that breaking the town’s organic parks management plan to spray chemical herbicides to mitigate the weeds was necessary.
After that meeting, town staff maintained the weeds by regularly mowing at the park, because it was too late in the season to effectively spray herbicide.
The town still wants to stick to the organic management plan whenever possible, said Town Administrator Andrea Phillips. The chemical sprays should bring the weeds under control to the point where the parks department can manage them with organic methods moving forward, she said.