January 2010

Downtown Vernon BrownKnows respond to the snowgates issue on his website

l3wis January 9, 2010 13Comments

Vernon responds to all the ANON people out there;

Thank you for the comments on the snow gates posting. I especially appreciate Theresa Stehly courageously putting her name to her comments rather than doing it annonymously. Theresa and I recently had what I found to be a productive phone discussion about this issue and others. I respect her passion for this and other issues. Here are a couple follow-ups:

You stinky rotten ANON people, what do you know? Especially you Costner. Go dance with the wolves or something.

Further investigation – I committed to Theresa that I’d call the vendor she referenced. I placed that call Friday and left a message.

Yeah, and I had tea with the tooth fairy today. By the way, her unicorn says hi.

• 40% increased cost – “Costner” asked how snow gates can add 40% to the cost of snow removal. This goes beyond the intial cost of equipment. It’s the extra time it takes to plow a street with the gates. Plow operators can’t go as fast with snow gates. The biggest expense in any snow removal is overtime, or in the case of the latest historic event, holiday pay. In that $1.8 million event, the snow gates would have cost an extra $720,000. However, the major point is that they wouldn’t work anyway. Vendors say up to 12 inches. In practice, it’s typically anything more than eight inches.

Actually several communities says it saves time, because you don’t have to go back and clean out windrows in intersections AND you don’t have to slow down to use snowgates. Did you watch the video? But more importantly this is about public safety and damage to vehicles. And furthermore some cities have used the gates in up to 30″ of snow. As for your fuzzy math, we can tell you are a marketing person and not an accountant.

Argus Story – For more on this issue click here to read a recent story. Note the quote from Bismarck’s assistant city administrator that snow gates don’t clear your driveway like you shoveled.

No they don’t, but instead of scooping 4 feet of snow out of the driveway, you scoop 4 inches. This last snowfall I went out with a shovel RIGHT AFTER  the snowplow came by. Some of it was so hard, I actually was throwing chunks of ice-snow the size of field rocks instead of scooping. This is assanine. I pay taxes to remove snow from my street, I don’t pay them to push that snow into my private drive.

I live on an emergency route. If anyone would love to have snow disappear from the end of my driveway, it’d be me. That is if they would truly work. I will continue the research. However, it is all about priorities and for me my priority would be to save the extra 40% for badly needed street repairs come spring. That’s where I see demand from citizens for more improved services.

So when is the city gonna start spending money on the streets instead of monkey crappers? Just wondering. Vernon, I don’t think snowgates would work on all the crap you spread. I’ll have all the ANON people clean it up.