How long is long enough?

Hurricane Irene charged through Richmond exactly two weeks ago today.

Yet the pile of tree debris in front of my house has gone untouched by city clean-up crews for 12 days. I notified the city that it was good to go two days after the hurricane.

The same seems to be true in every neighborhood I've driven through -- from Northside to the Museum District to the near West End. It's worse in some areas. On the way home from the grocery store this afternoon I saw a giant city-owned tree that crashed down on a corner lot, crushing a board fence and an outbuilding. It had not been touched since it fell. Nearby was a pile of debris from a city-owned tree that had blocked a road during the storm. It had been cut into chunks and piled at the curb in front of a home.

This lack of cleanup makes parking especially difficult.

What gives? When will the city get around to clearing debris from our neighborhoods?

Maybe Mayor Dwight Jones has other things on his mind. He was slammed last week in published reports that said he failed to list his new oceanfront condo on Singer Island in Florida, for which he paid a quarter of a million dollars, on his 2011 Statement of Economic Interests.

In addition, at least one member of City Council is asking whether the mayor was even in the city when the hurricane hit. Councilman Marty Jewell insisted, "If he was here, he would have shown his face. He lives for the camera." (The city's top administrative officer says the mayor was in Richmond.)

The mayor did manage to be seen on TV when he joined Virginia's governor for a photo-op tour of hurricane damage in the near West End.

And he was heard from a few days later when he dispatched GRTC buses to housing projects to take residents to grocery stores. (A few days later, a published report said that, between them, two of the buses had transported one person. I wonder what the unit cost for that project was.)

He also was before TV cameras at the airport yesterday to greet President Obama as he arrived in Richmond for a speech at the University of Richmond.

Clearly, the mayor loves being on TV.

But when is he going to clean up the tree debris that's been littering the city's curbs for two weeks?

Perhaps he's waiting until he can arrange for television coverage.