(WBBM NEWSRADO) -- Chicago's inspector general says the Department of Streets and Sanitation is not doing a good enough job maintaining city-owned vacant lots and that the system is so confused city officials have been ticketing their own lots, apparently assuming they were privately owned.
The inspector general's office says, basically, the city's weed-cutting program isn't cutting it.
Streets and San has not been meeting its goal of mowing all city-owned vacant lots at least four times when weeds are growing, and that's three seasons during the year.
The IG says the weeds and high grass harbor rodents, mosquitoes and debris and that this is a problem especially on the South and West sides.
To add to all this: The IG says there's no reliable list of city-owned vacant lots, so ward superintendents have wasted time and money by writing thousands of citations for unkept lots to the city of Chicago, it turns out. The ward superintendents have assumed the lots were privately owned.
The inspector general says Streets and San has started making changes.
