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 Last winter the city developed a snow and ice removal plan for
the street department. The planned outlined how snow and ice would
be dealt with by the street crews and included an order of priority
for clearing snow.
This week City Administrator Clay Johnson said that when the plan
was designed it was noted that it would be a “living document” that
would change as needed. This year, discussions with Street
Superintended Walt Landers and his crew had resulted in a few
suggestions on how to make the plan more effective. One of the
suggestions, Johnson said was to establish a few Snow Routes in the
city.
A snow route would require that at a certain point, vehicles be
removed from street side parking, so that snow plows could pass
through cleaning the streets curb-to-curb.
The proposed snow routes would take effect when there were two
inches of snow accumulation. The routes would include Lincoln Avenue
from College to Union, Park Place from Union to Elm, Southgate from
North Kickapoo to Bond, and Wyatt Avenue in its entirety.
 Johnson said that adding these snow routes to the plan would not be
the grounds for a ticket-able offense. If the city wishes to enforce
the snow route, and issue tickets to cars that remain parked on the
street, an ordinance would have to be drafted and passed.
Mourning asked if these particular streets had been selected because
they are streets with medians. Johnson said that perhaps they had.
Mourning then asked if the snow route streets would be moved up on
the priority list. He noted that last year the plan included
priorities of cleaning the downtown area first, then roads to
schools and emergency service facilities. He wondered if these
streets would now be bumped up on the list. Johnson said with the
possible exception of Wyatt, the streets would not be given
priority.
Mourning worried now about implementing the snow route and causing
an inconvenience for the vehicle owners. He said if a car owner had
to move the vehicle around the corner to another street and leave it
there for a couple of days, it would be a big inconvenience. He also
noted that some of these streets do not have driveways at the homes.
Johnson said he thought that on the suggested streets many of the
homes do have driveways.
Jonie Tibbs wondered why Pulaski Street was not being considered.
She said that there is parking on both sides of the street, and
since the street was re-done last year, it is very narrow. She noted
that Pulaski is also one of the main arteries from the Route 121
highway to the downtown area.
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Johnson said that Pulaski Street had been discussed last year, and
it was believed that forcing vehicles to move on that street would
be a huge inconvenience as most of them did not have access to
driveways. When discussed last year, there was also a suggestion
that cars could be asked to park only on one side of the street on
snow route days. Johnson said that also seemed to be too big of an
inconvenience.
In discussing whether or not to put the snow route on the voting agenda for
Monday, Tibbs said she wanted to wait. Jeff Hoinacki said the item could be
placed on the agenda, but tabled if the council needs more time to consider it.
Michelle Bauer said she might want more clarification about this suggestion from
Landers, who was not present Tuesday evening. Johnson asked what kind of
questions the council might have for Landers next week. He said he wanted to be
able to report back to Landers and give him an idea of what kind of information
he needs to be prepared with on Monday.
Bauer said she’d like to know how and why these four streets were chosen for the
first snow routes. She also wondered if there were other, or more streets that
should also be added.
Steve Parrott wondered if this was going to be a ‘pilot’ year for the snow
routes, and if so, maybe Pulaski should be added to see how it works out.
Neitzel said that Broadway was also a main artery to the downtown area, and in
many areas there are alleys behind the homes on Broadway and even garages, where
vehicles could be moved, but Tibbs countered that there were also alleys on
Pulaski Street in the same parts of town as on Broadway.
As the discussion came to an end, Mourning said he did want to commend the city
street crew for their efforts last year. He said he felt like they did an
excellent job of getting streets cleared off quickly and efficiently.
Neitzel then asked if the item could be placed on the agenda with the
understanding that they would hear from Landers on the matter before any motion
was entertained. By doing this, if questions still arise, the council will have
the ability to table the item and discuss it further at a later time.
[Nila Smith] |
