Profile: Cathy Gurney of Sierra Landscape & Maintenance- Building a Legacy

Interview by Leslie McGuire

The legacy of Cathy and Craig Gurney carries over to others. Cathy has been very active in the political arena. She?EUR??,,????'???s on the CLCA legislative committee and the immigration task force. She also worked on Dreams Across America.

Cathy and Craig Gurney started their original landscape business in 1981. They decided to start doing installation and maintenance with a Sears lawn mower, a pickup truck and some hand tools. The two weren?EUR??,,????'???t afraid of hard work and went around recruiting accounts.

Says Cathy, ?EUR??,,????'??For my sixth wedding anniversary I got a Snapper self drive lawn mower because I was seven months pregnant. I was very excited about it.?EUR??,,????'?? By 1986 they had four employees and decided to sell that business for $30 thousand with all the equipment and the truck. They pulled up stakes and moved to Lake Almanor in the Siskiyou mountains. After buying a fencing business and a house, they started a new landscaping business doing residential landscaping and maintenance.

 

Centennial Park in Oroville, California is on the Feather River. Sierra Landscape & Maintenance did all the landscaping, irrigation and bark, as well as the lighting trenching.

Craig passed his contractors C27 license exam and got a C13 in fencing and they combined the two companies. However, shoveling snow up to 16 foot drifts prompted Cathy to rethink that area. She ?EUR??,,????'??requested they move.?EUR??,,????'?? They chose Chico, California. So, along with two horses, two goats, three dogs and three children they set up shop again.

At that point the company was bringing in $700 thousand per year with both of them actively working in the business. ?EUR??,,????'??I designed and Craig installed and we made the transition from residential to all commercial. At that point we had about five employees. It was a lot of work but worth it because we were building a legacy and hoped our children would want to work in the business someday, too.?EUR??,,????'??

As far as the smaller maintenance tools are concerned, Sierra has 13 backpack blowers that are half Stihl and half Echo; five Stihl edgers; eight trimmers; four Stihl pole saws and four gas-powered Stihl hedge trimmers. They also have the requisite shovels, rakes, clippers and hand tools.

Their son Gerritt got his degree in Electro Mechanical Drafting and Engineering and moved back to California to work for the company. Gerritt helped start their commercial maintenance division in Chico. Just last March he opened the Sacramento office of their commercial maintenance division and is starting his second crew.

Cathy has been very active in the political arena. She?EUR??,,????'???s on the CLCA Legislative Committee and the Immigration Task Force. She also worked on Dreams Across America which was a train that left Los Angeles with 65 legal aliens and Americans all of whom were trying to live the American dream. The broken immigration system is preventing them from achieving their dreams. They stopped everywhere (Arizona, Texas, Chicago and Virginia?EUR??,,????'??+and met up with the other train coming from the East Coast and Miami) until there were 100 people who all met in Washington, DC. Their goal was not to look at immigration in a political sense, they wanted to bring their dreams as Americans and what the country was founded on. Cathy was invited to meet with Senator Kennedy and asked congress and the senate to fix the immigration laws.

Sierra Landscape now has between 45 and 60 employees of which 40 are full time. Cathy has six crews composed of five guys each, and is looking to add two more crews shortly. For the Hampton Inn project, they did all the landscaping and irrigation grading, installed trees, shrubs, groundcover and bark mulch.

?EUR??,,????'??We cannot carry on in this country if we have enforcement only. We need a safe and secure work force but we have not been given the tools to do that,?EUR??,,????'?? says Cathy. ?EUR??,,????'??As a small business woman who started a business to pass on to her family, I may not be in business if they don?EUR??,,????'???t make drastic changes.?EUR??,,????'?? That?EUR??,,????'???s why Cathy serves on the Immigration Task Force of CLCA.

?EUR??,,????'??Unfortunately there was no agreement, but it was a good start even though both houses refused to come together. It was very disheartening when it was dropped,?EUR??,,????'?? says Cathy and she encourages anyone wanting more information to visit the Dreams Across America web site. She?EUR??,,????'???s on the Board of Directors of DAA. They intend to continue on with the moral aspect of immigration reform.

This year they?EUR??,,????'???re focusing on growing their commercial maintenance division. In order to keep the crews working efficiently, Sierra has 13 trucks, eight trailers, four Mustang skid steers which they found to be quite cost effective, a Bobcat skid steer, an excavator, five mid-size (42-inch) walk behind mowers, a 54-inch John Deere riding mower and 10 21-inch Snapper and Toro mowers.

Sierra Landscape & Maintenance has six skid steers and an excavator. The maintenance division has seven maintenance trailers and 20 vehicles in their fleet, all of which are branded. In addition, they have 15 mowers and six maintenance crews with five guys per crew. ?EUR??,,????'??Our operations manager, Chris Sanders, is Craig?EUR??,,????'???s right hand man,?EUR??,,????'?? says Cathy. ?EUR??,,????'??He handles scheduling, oversight, is also the liaison for inspections and has the patience of a saint. He never raises his voice and is always calm and collected. Chris treats people with the utmost respect and that?EUR??,,????'???s hard to find.?EUR??,,????'??

They try to do at least one project pro bono each year. They installed all landscaping at the Jesus Center getting the materials donated with Sierra providing the labor. They maintain it still. One pro bono project is the Mechoopda Indian Cleanup. Sierra maintains some of their properties such as the cemetery and housing projects. They have a cleanup day and Cathy and Craig donated labor to clean up one of the housing projects.

?EUR??,,????'??Individually everyone does good work,?EUR??,,????'?? says Cathy. ?EUR??,,????'??But working as a team is much more difficult. You have to have good communication skills especially when there are language barriers.

?EUR??,,????'??Our biggest challenge is the economy and finding good employees that want longevity and take pride in their work. We offer decent benefits?EUR??,,????'??+medical, dental and vision?EUR??,,????'??+and we pay 100 percent of the insurance premiums for our employees.

Says Cathy, ?EUR??,,????'??This will be a hard year coming up, but we just have to be creative and find our niche. We?EUR??,,????'???ve talked to our employees and they?EUR??,,????'???ve agreed to keep going even if it means taking one day a week off. They?EUR??,,????'???re a heck of a group?EUR??,,????'??+and we?EUR??,,????'???ll survive this, too.?EUR??,,????'??