Partners:

Mosquito Control, Roads and Bridges, Waste Management

Although the CDD controls and performs much of the maintenance work within Harmony, we do have partners within the Osceola County government that work with us in making Harmony a wonderful community. Some of Harmony’s County partners are Mosquito Control which monitors and manages the mosquito population; Roads and Bridges which maintains the streets (that are not behind gates) and drainage inlets/pipes within the streets; Waste Management which takes away the garbage, yard waste, recyclables, and bulk and white goods; Fire/Rescue which helps all of us in emergencies; Code Enforcement which makes sure property owners are abiding by County Codes; and the Sheriff’s Department which enforces the law, both County ordinances and State law. Here are messages from a few of our partners.

Is It A Mosquito or a Midge?

it is important that mosquito populations are monitored and controlled.

What should you do if you notice a lot of mosquitoes in and around your property?

Susan Gosselin, Mosquito Control Director in Osceola County, provided the following information for everyone in Harmony— Our service is a human health-based service so we do not treat for midges or any other non-virus carrying insect.

How we function: ml?id=59d26abad1db4f3288e4ed8455e 8ae43. We update the maps daily.

1. Service Calls – we respond to complaints with a visit to the address of the complainant to look for sources of mosquitoes on property and nearby. Please contact us at 407-742-0505 and provide your name, phone number, and address.

2. Mosquito Larvae treatment – we treat storm drains, ditches, ponds, and wet lands, including conservation areas, with organic larvicides to keep the larval population low but still available as food to other aquatic organisms. This treatment occurs during daylight hours and where we have access. Sometimes access is through a resident’s yard.

4. If three or more contiguous zones have more than 1000 mosquitoes per trap night for two trap cycles, aerial spray is scheduled. We do press releases, social media postings, and Everbridge calls to notify residents in the affected areas. The last aerial spray we conducted was after Hurricane Ian.

5. We also respond to notifications of mosquito borne virus cases throughout the community as we are on the front line in keeping diseases such as West Nile, Dengue, Malaria, and Zika at bay by trapping and testing mosquitoes for the illness and completing adulticide spray without trap counts. We DO NOT give out notice of where a patient lives per HIPPA.

Many flying insects breed in Buck Lake, Cat Lake, and the ponds—midges, damselflies, dragonflies, mayflies and mosquitoes. These insects are a vital food source for fish, bats, and other wildlife here in Harmony. Although they can be annoying when they emerge in large numbers and congregate around your doors, most are not a health hazard, that is, with the exception of the mosquito. The mosquito can carry several diseases that affect humans, so

3. The County is currently divided into 58 zones. Each zone represents the area an adulticiding truck can cover in one night. Each zone is trapped for adult mosquitoes for one night to monitor population numbers every two weeks. If 25 or more adult mosquitoes are caught in a trap in one trap night, a night-time adulticiding spray is scheduled. This is per State code. We can only spray for adult mosquitoes when wind speeds are below 10 mph and it is not raining. Maps of scheduled spray areas can be seen here: https://gis.osceola. org/portal/apps/webappviewer/index.ht

Ms. Gosselin has also told us that parking on both sides of the streets in Harmony causes difficulties for Mosquito Control. When they have to bring the trucks out to do larvae control of the mosquitoes, they are frequently unable to access necessary treatment sites due to cars being parked on both sides of the streets. So, please, during mosquito season, try not to park in the streets. If you have to park on the street, please coordinate with your neighbors so that there are not two cars parked on opposite sides at the same location on the street.

Leaves, Leaves, Leaves

Very soon Harmony’s trees will be dropping their leaves and that means the rakes will come out. Each Harmony resident is responsible for cleaning up the leaves that fall on and in front of their homes. Many residents that have moved to Harmony from up north are used to raking their leaves to the curb and then having them vacuumed up by the city or county. Osceola County, however, does not have a vacuum truck that sucks leaves up from the curbside. So, you will need to place your leaves in a can or bag and set them out with your other yard waste, but only after the kids have played in them.

Corey Godlewski, Senior Foreman of Road and Bridge, Osceola County, provided the following information—

We currently have one JetVac truck for all of Osceola County to handle this type of work (cleaning stormwater pipes). As you can imagine, we have an extensive list of work orders throughout the county which are handled on a “First In, First Out” basis. Based on my last assessment of the storm drains along Five Oaks Drive, I would like to make a recommendation as a means of future preventative maintenance: Please advise all landscaping/lawn maintenance crews to pick up yard waste and debris and avoid blowing anything towards the curb and storm drains, as my JetVac operator specifically stated the bulk of material that he is removing from the storm drains is leaf debris from the trees located between the road and the sidewalks. Thank kindly you for your understanding and patience.

Waste Management

Mike Lewis, Residential Route Manager, Waste Management provided the following information to help Harmony resident Harmony’s yard waste (your container) and recyclables (blue lid) are picked up on Mondays and garbage (tan lid) and bulk waste on Tuesdays. Each of these containers must be placed, if you are on an alley, at the alley edge, and if do not have an alley behind your house, at the curb in front of your home before 6 am on the collection day.

Each container or bulk item must be placed at least 3 feet from other containers and any other object, such as cars, mailboxes, sign posts, or boulders. You can put out up to 3 cubic yards of bulk items on Tuesday of each week. A mattress and box spring can be picked up together unless it is a king size. For king size, put the mattress out one week and the box spring the next week to avoid an extra charge. If you need to dispose of white items (refrigerators, stoves, water heaters, freezers, and BBQ grills and other similar appliances, call 407-605-3892 to schedule a pick up date.

If you put your containers on the street, please try to park your car or truck in your driveway on Mondays and Tuesdays. Parking on both sides of the street makes it difficult to pick up waste and may cause a delay in service.

If you have any problems with our service, please call us right away at 407-605-3892 and we will take care of the issue as soon as possible.

Hopefully this information from three of Harmony’s County partners will help you better understand what they do and how they interact with Harmony. n

HEALTHCARE

By Kim Kirsch Insurance Broker / District Manager, Healthcare Solutions Team