UPDATE II: I guess the street fleet was out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday, FILLING POTHOLES! The only spots they sanded were bridges and after they left at 3:30 PM they were CALLED back at 4:30 PM to sand, and only a handful of drivers responded to the request. But hey, if you drive a public works truck in the parade of lights you are getting $60 bones an hour. Priorities folks. Priorities. I also heard and still trying to verify there was almost 90 traffic accidents on Wednesday. Surprising? NOT.
UPDATE: I was told the sanders were out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday. I would be curious how many because when I drove to work at 4 PM on Cliff Avenue, parts of 41st street and Minnesota were pure ice and packed snow and I didn’t see one single sander out.
I know I have complained about this before, but today was literally a Sh!t show. With the weather today being what is was I decided to drive my car. Bad decision. While I do have studded snow tires on my bike, I try to avoid riding in the dark when conditions are very icy, but I would have probably been safer on my bike. Normally it takes me about 20 minutes to commute to work (5 miles) it took me 30 minutes today in my car, not just because of the terrible condition of the streets but because multiple streets were closed due to accidents.
I get it, there really wasn’t a forecast for this event, but it shouldn’t matter, it is the END OF NOVEMBER! Those sanders should be ready at ALL TIMES!
I did see them out tonight at 9 PM. Thanks . . . dumbasses.
So besides the personal expenditures of folks vehicles being damaged, we have the police and fire respond to these incidents. And now we are paying NIGHT differential to sand the streets. The pennies the city may have saved by not sanding this morning when the event started doesn’t even come close to the amount being spent on responding to these accidents.
Is our Mayor that stupid?
Maybe so, but it also falls back on his lack of leadership. Dave Munson would have been on the horn to Galen Huber at 6 am sending out those sanders. Why? Because public safety should never have a price tag, it is a requirement of municipal government to provide these services thru the taxes we pay. Makes you wonder if the city is in such dire straights that they can’t even send sanders out? We have around $80 million in reserves. We could sand every road in the state for a year and still not spend it all.
I suggested to a councilor that the council write an ordinance that takes control of street plowing and sanding. Basically it would require the street department to act on their own when there is an event and craft the ordinance in a way that pretty much requires them to act immediately to any winter weather event and take that control away from the mayor.