‘Less-than-adequate’ snow cleanup spurs complaints and plansDate: 12/17/2019 Last week I wrote about snow removal. It was easy to complain about the lousy job that took place in Springfield.
Complaining is, of course, part of the process. Every storm seems to follow the same basic route: first, we have the weather forecasters who tell us a storm is coming. They do this with varying levels of fear mongering.
Then panic ensues with people buying essential foods, filling up their cars and preparing to hunker down. Local TV loves this part, as they do standard stories about empty shelves in grocery stores, comparing this storm to other storms, standing in front of their studios in the snow talking about how heavy it is coming down and driving around in a jazzed up SUV describing driving conditions.
The next step is the realization of what actually has happened: is the storm as bad as we were told? That is followed by acceptance.
Cleanup is the next stop in this journey. This is where the city – any city – truly comes into play. At this level, complaining also becomes part of the process.
Nothing adds more joy to someone’s day than to spend an hour or two digging out, only to have their driveway filled in once or twice by plows. A second source of joy is watching your idiot neighbor cleaning out his or her sidewalk or driveway by dumping snow into a freshly plowed street.
After cleanup, there is a series of accusations by residents – “My street is still a mess” – and justifications by city officials who will claim they did a great job. I always love the post-mortem interviews with various Department of Public Works officials praising their staffs.
This cycle of events holds pretty true for all of our urban communities. It may vary in severity from one to another, but I think it’s safe to say if you live in a city this is what you face.
Members of the Springfield City Council are proposing ordinances that would assist city residents in making sure the Department of Public Works (DPW) does indeed do a good job and they should be commended for an attempt to break the usual storm cycle.
The councilors who met with the press last week are looking to re-treat all of the city’s streets ¬ not just main arteries. They want a simplified parking ban: no parking on the odd side of a street for the first 24 hours of a storm and then no parking on the even side for the next day. The councilors are also looking for the city to clear sidewalks not cleaned within 24 hours and then bill the property owner.
They also want to place the real-time map the DPW uses on the front page of the city’s website so the public can see which roads are being plowed and in what order.
All of these are great ideas and I commend the councilors for trying to improve essential city services.
Mayor Domenic Sarno also proposed the following: “Review our street inspector procedures; full court press with our Springfield Police Department with ticketing and towing; aggressive management and accountability of our plowing sub-contractors; and expanded pre-treatment of our roads.”
Thank you as well, sir.
Part of the way we can have more economic development in any of our cities is to make sure they are attractive to people. A city service in Massachusetts that can not be overlooked is how we deal with snow. Could you imagine having someone here to look over an opportunity in Springfield only to see the less-than-acceptable job of cleaning up snow that was on display?
Sorry for writing about snow twice in a row. I promise there will be no snow commentary next week.
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