Overall, a very good job!
While we are sure there are people who would disagree, we thought we would take a moment to give kudos to Mayor Dorinda Borer, Emergency Management Director Rick Fontana, his department, and Department of Public Works staff for the job they did in the past few weeks during the recent snow storms – some small, some bigger.
To be sure, there might be pockets of the city where things might cause residents to complain, but under the circumstances, we cannot but give credit where credit is due. In the last several weeks, the region has experienced record-setting cold, and over the last few weekends more snow than we have seen in quite some time.
It starts with planning. Over the holiday season break, the city’s teams were huddled, planning for what might come – and come it did. But planning has its own assurances. Like a team going into a big game with a “game plan,” the city had its various departments monitoring individual tasks, and getting things done. Earlier this winter season we saw several storms of the small variety (1 to 3 inches) with one hitting five inches in some areas. Keeping the sports metaphor, the smaller storms let the city departments hone their approaches and find where the snags might be.
Last week, the state saw the largest single-day snowstorm totals in recent memory, exceeding one foot. Snow was coming down at nearly two inches per hour at one point. No amount of planning or getting the plows out early can keep up with that kind of accumulation. Yet, given the difficulty of the task, the Department of Public Works staff, along with Board of Education crews, and other subsidiary workers did an excellent job.
With the announcement right after the storm the region was threatened with another, and even bigger storm coming up the coast, teams worked hard all last week to get piles of snow along sidewalks and corners off the streets, carting it away to various locations.
As we said, there may be some areas of the city where residents are not happy or disappointed in the way their streets were treated and plowed up, but, overall, the city’s leadership and staff overcame the difficulties and did a job that deserves praise.
While we are on the subject, praise should go, too, to the city’s residents, who followed the parking bans and regulations. Major arteries were able to be cleared easily, and side streets were not cluttered with vehicles on the wrong side of the street. Again, there were some incidents of tagging and towing, but everyone was on the same page.
This points out that snow removal plans are not only the purview of city leadership and technical staff, but it is also the responsibility of all to cooperate and allow the job to get done.
That is the case in these most recent incidents, and with the final weeks of winter coming up, February being an historically volatile month, we hope that cooperation continues into the spring thaw.