Annapolis crews not backing down, continue to plow through storm
“There is no city or county government that is geared up to move all of this snow.”
–Gov. Martin O’Malley, Feb. 10, 2010
Mayor Cohen wants residents to know that the City of Annapolis is working around the clock and has pulled in several contractors to make our roads passable and ensure public safety. Deteriorating weather conditions have forced other jurisdictions across Maryland and Virginia to pull plows off the roads. We continue to plow in Annapolis. The mayor thanks you for your patience during these unprecedented snow events over the past week.
I walked through downtown today, the eleventh day after the storm. I was truly shocked at the level of disregard on the part of the City on having mayor businesses clean up their sidewalks on the City’s main streets. I and other were forced to walk out in street on Compromise and Sixth Street with cars roaring by within a few feet. I am talking about major businesses with the resources to hire someone for a few hours to clean up their sidewalks. Most absolutely shocking was that the City had not even cleaned its own sidewalks in front of the old rec center. How can that possibly be allowed so many days after the storm. I can think of no excuse for that at all. Shame, shame!!
The front loaders cleared Park Ave. and Wells St. yesterday and they are a million times better now! Thank you very much!
Just a few words about historic storms in other cities. Several folks have mentioned that Mayor Jane Byrne lost her bid for reelection in Chicago because of poor handling of winter storms. WRONG!It was her predecessor, Michael Bilandic (dubbed Mayor Bland) who lost his reelection bid. Jayne Byrne was the one who beat him and became mayor.
I live off Burnside Street and Severn Avenue – all of these streets are VERY DANGEROUS due to slush and up to 5 INCHES or MORE OF ICE –
CARS SLIP AND SLIDE ALL OVER and ARE GETTING STUCK FREQUENTLY.
PERSONALLY I WOULD HIRE ALL OF THE WORKERS AND EQUIPMENT AT WATERGATE VILLAGE as THEY HAVE DONE A PHENOMENAL JOB with their EQUIPMENT!
Please HIRE outside contractors QUICKLY in future contingency plans in the future.
( APPARENTLY we didn’t learn or care about FUTURE PLANNING after the MAJOR STORM in DECEMBER)
BTW It is nearly impossible to get over to LEEWARD MARKET off 2nd Street and Chester Avenue … and the LOWER PART OF EASTPORT is in HORRIBLE SHAPE.
Honestly although these 2 storms are of Major Proportion – perhaps wise government leaders would take heed of what much northern cities do.
Thumbs up for the hard working men out there –
Thumbs down for VERY POOR PLANNING and DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES to ANNAPOLIS BUSINESSED and RESIDENTS.
FRANKLY WITHOUT – HIRING and PLANNING FOR THESE EXCEPTIONAL OCCURENCES – THE CITY AND ITS BUSINESSES HAVE LOST HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS.
NOT TO MENTION the LOSS OF WORK HOURS – BY MANY RESIDENTS.
PEOPLE IN THE REST OF THE COUNTY AND THE DC AREA – Think are snow removal policy is based sunshine!!
Continuing the theme of constructive criticism, I offer the following from the perspective of someone who grew up in snow country:
1. Even in difficult budget years, accept the city’s snow removal limitations proactively. Outside snow removal resources should have been lined up in advance, so they could have been deployed from the very beginning of the first large storm.
2. Have a plan that gets the parked cars off the streets, not all at once, but in a logical pre-defined sequence of streets. Publicize the plan widely so no one can have the excuse of not knowing. Accept the fact that significant towing will be required to do this, especially in a major storm. I’d bet the city could even pay the towing charges and still come out ahead, as the street clearing process would go so much more efficiently, particularly in the narrow streets in the older parts of town.
3. In a major storm, consider temporarily “sacrificing” the sidewalks on one side of the street to have a place to push the snow completely off the street (and don’t plow snow onto the sidewalks on the other side!). Then come back and remove that snow to reclaim the sidewalks after all the streets have been cleared.
Please also plow Park Ave. when the crew is sent to Jefferson, Wells, Winsdor and Adams Streets. I offered a hot drink to a plow driver widening President St. last night, and he told me that he’d put some salt on Park Ave. to break up the ice so it could be plowed today, but unfortunately that did not happen.
Also, FYI for future reference, there is a discrepancy between the city snow route map and streets that are sign posted as emergency snow routes. Specifically, President St. from Madison to Boucher is sign posted as a snow emergency route, but is not identified on the city snow route map as such. The plows have treated it as an emergency route, however.
Thank you for going out with the plows – it’s great to see the mayor out there helping the effort!
Hi Josh,
Thanks for all your hard work in this crazy event. Many of our neighbors here in Eastport have been very patient and understanding so far. This season has presented us with an enormous task. The traditional approach of pushing that much snow around our streets isn’t an answer. Front-end loaders or small bobcats would make more efficient work to create “passable” streets. Living close to the Eastport Firehouse, emergency vehicles pass by our residence when on call frequently. I’ve witness 2 fire engines and several ambulances stuck, where the firehouses’ plow had to come rescue them. Last night at 1:30 am, a whole crew was doing another such rescue waking may neighbors. I think our streets are far from passable if the people whose job to help in emergencies can’t get to and from without needing to be dugout themselves. Seeing the feedback, I know there’s lots of frustration in Eastport. We have seen very little assistance since the first storm in Dec. Please help us out Josh.
I live on Westwood Road in Wardour and though most of our neigborhood has been plowed Westwood Road has gotten almost no attention and is still such a rutted mess that the mail carrier is afraid to drive down the street. Hence we haven’t even had mail delivery since before last Saturday’s first blizzard.
Josh–
We are int he home stretch till Monday. If you are looking for some constructive (not critical nor pathological) criticism,
http://www.eyeonannapolis.net/2010/02/12/dear-mr-mayor/
I want to say thank you for plowing my street today.
I just walked again out to South Southwood and Viginia. The corner is now filled with water, ice and ice dams, preventing a car driving through the intersection. This will be even worse in the morning. Southwood- right at Virginia has two 8″ to 10″ high ice dams that no car can get through. The bottom if the cars will be ripped out. I just called Public Works and reported it to Jim Bolitho that this is very dangerous. Thank you for your assistance
Josh – why does it seem you have no response to the many people raising issues about the state of the roads in Eastport?
I live on Bay Ridge Ave between Highland Ave and Parkwood and neither street has been touched. Those of us along this area access the street system from the alley parralleling Bay Ridge Ave. The people along this area park our cars off of the streets(a good thing for the City and snow removal), but we have all had to shovel to exhaustion make any headway and 3 are over 70 years old and most are 50-60 years of age. We have kept 3 of our side walks clean throughout the entire process. When I finally got out today in my Jeep, I noticed that many of the streets near us have been cleared and I also observed that none of the walks along Truxtun park have been cleared and people are walking in the street. Please see if our situation can be resolved.
Friday afternoon in the mayor’s old neighborhood – Jefferson, Wells, Windsor, and Adams still haven’t seen the first plow since this silly weather started a week ago. (I did see a plow getting towed out of Windsor by a front end loader a couple of days ago, though I don’t think that counts
)
I have walked downtown and hitched a ride out of the neighborhood, and I applaud the efforts of the Department of Public Works in getting much of the city clean to blacktop, however we have four to six inches of ice and more snow remaining on top of that on the roads here.
I understand the Herculean effort that DPW has exhibited, but here’s hoping some of this snow and ice gets scraped away before the next snowfall starts on Monday afternoon!
Thank you Public Works and Mayor Cohen the Bobcat was just here and knew how to push snow.
Thank you.
I saw an earlier blog where people complained about snow being dumped into our waterways and its impact on the environment. I’m pretty sure that even if the snow were left to melt, it would still end up in our waterways. But here’s a thought: In past years in large snows like this, plowed snow was taken to the stadium parking lot and piled up. I haven’t been past the stadium as of yet, but isn’t that a possible solution?