I guess it’s like how the city’s code enforcement office ‘supposedly’ operates, they don’t investigate or hand out violations until there is a complaint made;
“I think I’m getting so many calls now I’m going to have to take some motor graders out there and try to limit the amount of snow they put in people’s driveways, but certainly we need to go out and do it,” Huber said.
Maybe Huber needs to see a psychiatrist about why he is ‘hoarding’ his motor graders in the street department garages instead putting them to work? I also suggest that citizens call his department like 4-8 times in one day about the same street that needs to be plowed, like how they hand out code enforcement violations. I also suggest you don’t scoop your sidewalk until after January 1st. And if the city tries to fine you, just tell them that your sidewalk scooping budget ran out for 2013 due to the Spring ice storm, besides you have better things to spend your money on, like a wet bar in your family room or a man cave in your garage, and if the public wants to hang out there, they can, for a nominal ‘caving’ fee, but not until the man cave members have used it first.
We should install those radiant heating elements under all the roads so the snow just melts away. Problem solved… and it will only cost us about $13 Billion to do all the roads in the city.
Sure it is expensive, but you could walk barefoot in January… that is worth something right?
/s
…..and you could play tennis year round right in your own front yard!!!!
First the leaves, now the snow, what’s next? Maybe the City should leave crime to the local neighborhood vigilantes too. Well, sometimes I feel like they already are…..
The streets in this town have been terrible since that first big snow a couple weeks ago. Compound a couple snow events of an inch or less and no plowing done and you have side streets that are in deplorable conditions. The downtown area was all but abandoned in any snow removal effort. You couldn’t even get out of your vehicle if you parallel parked on 10th or 11th Streets because of the ice chunks. This condition was two weeks after the big snow. The question is why has the City’s snow removal program deteriorated? These past few weeks is not indicative of past performance and clearly indicates there has been a policy change by this mayor. What is he saving the street department money for since he clearly doesn’t think its important to plow the streets this winter.
“What is he saving the street department money for since he clearly doesn’t think its important to plow the streets this winter”…… Bond Payments……. TIFs…….. Indoor Tennis….. Indoor Hockey…….. EC…….. Streets to nowhere……. Consultants to tell him is doing a good job……. Interest charges……..
But wait, they did send the equipment out today to scrape our dry streets…..
“These past few weeks is not indicative of past performance and clearly indicates there has been a policy change by this mayor.”
Curious? Isn’t it? I could see if the city was wallowing in debt, not the case, around 30 to 40 million in surpluses, according to MMM. So why the lack of public service?
Do you think, it stems from all those years trampling the poor in the CC industry, that these people don’t deserve the same services as his ‘class’ because they don’t pay the same in taxes?
And he calls himself a Democrat? LOL. What makes me laugh even more are his Democratic followers. Dumb as fence posts.
The handling of the leaves and now the snow by our City is literally a slippery path in more than one way that the City has been on for some time.
Let us go back to the drainage problems we had in this
city about eight years ago due to flooding. To the degree that those problems have been solved, they were solved because local citizens personally affected with flooding challenged the City to do something. If you remember, many of our City fathers/mothers, especially those who served on the Capital Improvement Committee were opposed to the immediacy of spending the necessary funds to solve the drainage problems, because they thought it would drain their CI fund at the expense of other pet projects coveted under the title of “economic development.”
Increasingly, government does not seem to work and is merely an instrument used to serve the few rather than the many, and the inability of our City fathers/mothers to adequately address such basic services as street cleaning, whether it be leaves or snow, is demonstrative of this new and unfortunate reality.
It’s winter, we live in South Dakota, get used to it and get over it. The men and women who work durung the big snow events deserve our thanks not the condemnation. Things will be better in the Spring!
BH, where was anyone condemning the actual snowplow drivers in this thread? This is about leadership. I totally understand that the operators are following orders, they only do what they are told. The question here, is why isn’t the mayor telling Huber to get these streets cleaned?
City streets are fantastic compared to the paths with ditches all the TEA partiers living out in the low tax rural residential development havens “own”.
I promptly shoveled my driveway and sidewalk after the plow went through several weeks ago.
THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO STREET IN MY SUBDIVISION THAT NEEDED TO BE RE-PLOWED!!!!!!
I just came home to find a ridge of ice chunks blocking the end of my driveway because they came through with the plow AGAIN!
I was so damn mad, I shoveled the whole mess back into the street!!!!!!
City, if you can figure out who I am, come and give me a ticket and PLEASE have the Mayor personally deliver it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!***************************
Taxpayer, I agree. I couldn’t believe that they came around once again. It wasn’t a huge pile, but with the temps dropping by 30 degrees the next day it’s become pure ice.
Kinda thinking the same thing, should have done it while the temps have been good over the past week. No point plowing ice-packed snow in Zero degree temps.
I stopped to text & watched an operator getting used to snow gates. Couldn’t see or hear but surely lots of cussing. He finished one side then returned on the other. Didn’t take long for he to get good. It takes much longer but it’s job security once mastered.
I couldn’t do it. Can’t believe I complimented a city worker.