HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008-04-30 TranscriptionApril 30, 2008 Special City Council Work Session Page 1
Apri130, 2008 Special City Council Work Session 6:30 P.M.
Council Present: Bailey, Correia, Hayek, Wilburn, Wright, O'Donnell (6:50).
Absent: Champion
Staff Present: Helling, Karr, Holecek, Fosse, Fowler, O'Brien, Robinson, Thomas, Sobaski,
Boothroy, Stockman, Protaskey, and Morck
Snow Removal Discussion
Bailey: I think we'll get started. Um, thanks to all, to all of you for being here. I think I'll start
with an adaptation of my favorite quote about spring, because we finally see
spring. "Lo the winter is past, the snow is over and gone. The flowers appear on
the earth and the time of singing has come." So we're going to sing a little bit
about snow removal tonight, I guess. I won't ask you to sing, Rick. Um, how this
meeting is going to run tonight is we'll start out with, um, staff presentation, and
Council questions, and it will be very much like a normal work session that we
have. Then we'll have an opportunity for members of the public to comment, um,
in constructive ways about what they would like to see in snow removal, um next
winter. I hope we're talking about next winter and not later, um, this year. And
then Council will discuss what we've heard, and see if we want to go in any
particular direction, need further information from staff. So, with that, Dale you
had some comments?
Helling: Just briefly, um (clears throat), Rick Fosse is going to give a, uh, a presentation, uh,
Power Point presentation uh fairly extensive, there's a lot of things in there, talk
about a lot of different things we do with snow removal. As we go through, if
you have questions, your wanting, you know, brief sort of clarification on what
we're talking about, by all means let us know. Uh, but I think because we're
talking about the different aspects of what we do and who does it, uh, it all sort of
fits together so to get the full picture we'd like to, for any, you know, specific
discussion, lengthy discussion on any of the issues, let us go through the whole
thing first and then we can clarify before you open it to the public (inaudible).
Bailey: OK, great. Alright, great.
Helling: You're on.
Fosse: Thank you. Appreciate you taking the time to do this tonight. Uh, you know extreme
situations are great classrooms. Uh, they tend to put a magnifying glass on what
we do and it reveals opportunities, uh, to do things better. The key is taking time
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to reflect on them and learn from them, and that's part of what we're doing here
tonight. We've already done that internally quite a bit. We're broadening our
scope a little bit this evening, uh, to get input from you all, and also from the
public. Our objectives this evening are to share with you what we do and uh
current practices, that is: what we do, who does it, when do we do it, that sort of
thing, along with some of the unique experiences that we had this winter. And
then, uh, share some of the changes that are already in the works, answer your
questions, uh, get some feedback from you all and the public, and then ultimately
develop areas to focus on for improvement in the future. So with us tonight we
have a lot of staff here from the different departments, because this is something
that is approached from a wide variety of departments and divisions, we'll get into
that, and we're all available for questions. And we'll be working from some of
the documents that Dale distributed prior to the meeting, and those are available
for, for, for the audience as well. We're going to go with the outline that's in the
Apri123rd, snow removal overview. We'll kind of stick with that. iJh, but dive
into a couple of other of the documents that were there as well. So, with that, let's
go ahead and, and dive in, let's get started. (Begins Power Point presentation.)
Prior to becoming Public Works Department Director, I viewed snow as just pure
joy falling from the sky. Uh, it was, it was, it meant snow days, kids sledding,
having a lot of fun, but that's, that's just not always the case. Um, you know
some people seem bewildered by it all, perhaps this, this is some of your state
(laughter). Jay-walking becomes more complicated in this kind of weather. Uh,
but, you know, for the rest of us, it just really became a burden on our, on our
lives this winter, it affected us day in and day out. I took this picture pretty much
in front of Dale's house, just to show that rank really has no privileges when it
comes to snow removal (laughter), that we stick to our priorities and go from
there. Um, what I'll do first of all is run through, uh, what we do and who does it,
and we'll be~in with the Streets Department. And, um, you may want to look at
the April 24t memo that, that Dale had put together entitled "Snow Removal",
and that's, that's the one that goes into quite a bit of detail about, uh, what, what
departments do what work. And in Public Works we, of course, we plow the
streets, uh, we do downtown snow removal -- and there's a distinction there
between plowing and removal. Plowing you push it to the side. Removal we take
it out and we put it someplace else. Uh, we clear intakes when we get rain and
snow during the winter time, and assist with loading the snow out of the parking
lots.
Uh, moving on to the, uh, Parking and Transit Division, or Department, um, they
do a lot of work related to our transit facilities, around the bus barn itself and also
the downtown transit interchange, the Washington Street hill, bus shelters all need
to be shoveled, and they also help us out with calls for buses who are having a
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hard time getting up hills, because they have a sander on one of their pick-ups,
they have two pick-ups with blades, um.
Parking shares in those duties as well. Something I didn't realize until just this
winter that they did, is they hand shovel all of the handicap parking stalls
downtown, clearing those out so that they're usable. And they plow our
downtown alleys. They've got equipment of the size that can get in and do that.
And another nice thing with their pick-ups is, is that we have streets near the
downtown area here that we can't get down with a plow because of parked cars
and whatever, they'll get through with their pick-up and get those opened up for
us. And they, as I said, they clear our downtown alleys.
Um, the Parks Department, uh, that memo really is, is very extensive on the things
that the Parks Department does, and we did that because they're often viewed as
the untapped resource, uh, for wintertime work. People wondering, what do, what
are they doing when they're not mowing? Well, they do a lot of things, and
that's, that's why we've outlined it in great detail on here. They've got a great
deal going on, and on, uh, page four, uh, Route? Excuse me, page three, Route 4
talks about that the crew that works on the Central Business District in the plaza,
keeps that in good shape for us, uh, throughout the winter.
And then also the Housing and Inspection Services Department, uh, is a part of all
this because they respond to complaints that we get about walks that, uh, are not
shoveled, or that are icy, and that sort of thing. So, you see that we come at it
with, with, with Public Works, Parks, Parking & Transit, and Housing all working
together here.
So, when do we go to work and what's, what's the trigger for getting in? Um, we
like to give the forecasters a hard time, but they really do a nice job for us,
compared to years past, and they have, they do a good job of forecasting and we
can (loud noise) based on those usually. Some storms are a little bit sneaky, will
come up, and we rely on the Police Department to let us know when it's time to
mobilize and get out there, and also, in the evenings, uh, we don't pay staff to sit
and wait in anticipation of a storm. Our police department stays in close contact
with us, calls us when it's time to bring people in, and, again, to respond to a
storm. So we work closely with the Police Department there.
Uh, how we go about our street clearing is we have eleven routes in town. We've
split the town in eleven segments, because we have eleven plows, and we have
two people for each plow so that we can work twenty-four hours a day on this,
and keep those plows going. And, within each route are prioritized, um, streets.
We have red, green and blue routes. The red routes have the highest priority. Uh,
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blue routes have second priority, and the green routes have third priority. This is
zooming in on, on pretty much on the Central Business District, and you can see
that we have a lot of red routes, and they correspond to arterial streets, bus routes,
and that sort of thing. As you work your way to the edge of town, you're going to
see more green and blue routes out there, and you'll see it, it limited to our arterial
streets and our bus routes.
Now the equipment we use to clear the, clear the streets, our snow plows have a, a
primary blade up front and then they have a wing plow on the side. That's very
important because if getting the street done in two passes is, uh, allows us to
cover a lot more territory rather than having to come back and do three or four.
Uh, the, the material spreader in back that puts out the sand and salt? That is, is, a
speed sensitive device so that when we set it for two hundred pounds per lane
mile, for instance, it will put that down whether we're driving five miles an hour,
or twenty-five miles an hour. It's nice, a nice feature to have. Inside the cab, they
control the uh, the plows and the, and the spreaders with a joystick here, and what
those buttons allow to do, is to put down additional blasts of salt, or they can, they
can actually pause it as well if they're going across area that really doesn't need
any material, and, of course they adjust the blades and all of that. It used to be a
maze of hydraulic levers, in the, in the cabs, but we've gone to the joysticks and
that works much better. In the fall when we take the leaf boxes out of the trucks,
the sanders go into the trucks. So we can see a sander here, and it really sits up
high, it's got somewhat of a high center of gravity and, and that can be a problem
for us on, on some of the slippier streets when the truck starts sliding around and,
and the, we've had one roll over in the past before. Um, our new trucks we're
buying with a, with a conveyor that's built right into the body, so all we have to
do is snap a sander into the back and we don't have to put a, an entire sander unit
in there. And that does a couple of things for us: it lowers that center of gravity
and it also allows us to haul more material which means fewer trips back to the
yard to get more stuff, better efficiency, we can stay on the road longer, it's just a
good thing all around, so it's been a good move for us.
This is our material of choice, what we put down when we can get it and, uh,
when the weather is right. We put down salt, just plain old, its sodium chloride,
and then its coated with a magnesium chloride solution -- that's what gives it the
green color here, and that does a variety of things for us. Primarily what it does is
it extends the working temperature down a number of degrees, so that it's more
potent. It also keeps the salt from, from forming into cakes and uh, getting,
getting caught inside of spreaders. And it gives it just a little bit of tackiness as
well, so when it hits the road it tends to stay where it goes rather than scattering
and piling up by the edge of the road. So that's been a very good additive for us;
however, this winter, uh, toward the end of January, we couldn't get it anymore
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because it, salt was in such, short, short supply, so not only were we working with
less salt, but the salt we had was not as potent as this stuff, our material of choice.
Now the weather doesn't always allow us to work with this material. If the wind
conditions or the pavement temperature conditions are such, sometimes we need
to blend an abrasive -brasive, excuse me, an abrasive in there, which, salt, or
excuse me, sand is what we use. And um, we like to avoid that if we can, because
of the residue that it leaves out there. I took this picture this morning on the way
into work, so it's obvious we don't, we don't have all the sand from last winter
cleaned up yet. (Clears throat.) We're hoping we're going to have the first pass
of the city complete by the end of this week. But so far we've trucked out, uh,
we've used the sweepers to pick up one-hundred and sixty-nine loads, truckloads,
of sand off the street. So we take that out to the landfill -it's not suitable to be
recycled for sand to go back down on the streets again, but we use it for daily
cover out at the landfills, so we do recycle it.
One of the downsides is once that sand finds its way into our storm sewer system,
it, it, plugs up some of our pipes and our drainage ways. It also is an abrasive that
works on our pavement markings, and, and we get much less life out of our
pavement markings when we, when we're using sand out there. And we're
spending about $220,000 a year on these pavement markings so we want to get as
much life out of them as we can.
Let's talk about downtown snow removal for a little bit. Um, that, that's an area
that that takes special attention and, uh, one of the things that we don't do, uh,
when it starts to snow downtown is to, is to go through with our plows down,
because what that would do is, is create a windrow of snow behind all these
parked cars, and then they are stuck, they can't get out. It's great for parking
revenues but it's not good for, for customer service. So what we do is we load
straight salt and we go out there and spread that, as I said, with the blades up, so
once the truck goes by you need to go out and bend over and look and see, you
know, what's actually happened, and then give that a little time and it melts the
snow off and we've got a ,we've got a situation like this without the windrows
along the cars here, and that's, that's one of the differences. And it's worked
pretty well for us. But there are situations where either because of temperature or
the rate of snowfall that that's just no longer effective. And, um, what we've
done is practice and is still just apply the salt, sometimes we mixed in some sand
just to, to help with the traction, but, but still did not plow the downtown because
of what it does to parking, loading zones, and commerce and that sort of thing.
The feedback we got from the Downtown Association this winter is, is they'd
rather see us do something than nothing, so what we started is, is plowing where
we can, filling in some of the parking spaces and also, windrowing to the center
of Clinton Street, where we have the width there, so we've taken four lanes and
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reduced it to two lanes and we're windrowing snow in the middle, all waiting so
we can come in and do snow removal in the evening.
Now one of our concerns with doing this, it, it, makes us nervous, we've got one,
two, three pieces of equipment here, uh, working in the downtown area, amongst
a lot of traffic. Uh, it does draw equipment from other areas of town, uh, but
more than that we worry about just the interactions with traffic, and then we have
a lot of brave students that are still going to class on days like this, and they've
got their hoods up, got their IPods in, and, and, more focused on their next step
than some of the equipment that's moving around them. So, it's, it's kind of a
scary thing for us to operate a lot of the street equipment during the day
downtown. Our preference is to wait until the afterhours.
So let's talk about that a little bit. When we do snow removal downtown, get rid
of the snow, a number of things need to align for that, and, and, before we can
schedule it. So it might not be that first night after the snow. Um, we need to
make sure that the snow stopped long enough that that we have plowed all of our
red routes in town and, and make sure that they're in good shape, because when
we move in downtown that pulls all of our resources there. Uh, not only from the
Streets Department, uh, but also from, uh some folks from Parking, PD, and uh,
um Parks as well. So we want to make sure that, that our streets are clear for
emergency services throughout the community, before we work downtown. We
also need about eight to twelve hours notice to the truckers that we hire to help
truck that, that stuff out of town. All of our trucks have sanders in them, and
these trucks are actually bigger than the ones we own anyway. So we contract
with them, and we hire about fifteen of them to work with us in a, in a given
evening.
Another thing we want to make sure of is that the, the businesses have had a
chance to, to clear they're sidewalks. And this is the only place in town where we
encourage them actually blowing the snow into the street, because we're going to
remove it anyway, it's good to have it out there, it just makes it easier for us. This
is, this is not a good thing to do in residential areas, um, your neighbors will; will
curse you, they call our office and, uh, complain about neighbors that do this sort
of thing in residential areas. But, but downtown it is appropriate, and it's helpful,
and what we don't want to happen is to do snow removal downtown and then
have the adjoining property owners clear their snow into the street. So once all
those things line up, uh, we go to work, and, and we get started about 11:00 in the
evening, and we really can't get going in earnest unti12:00 in the morning when
the cars, uh, when there's no parking downtown, but we can get started with a lot
of things. And here you can see some skid-loaders starting to work that snow out
into the street. And one thing you'll notice is, is you'll always have a vehicle
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that's, that's watching over them, because these guys move fast, and they, they
change direction quickly, you don't want pedestrians wandering into their work
zone, or you don't want vehicles getting into the work zone. It's, it's really a
safety issue there.
Um, once 2:00 a.m. rolls around, usually we give people unti12:30, uh, to get
their cars out of there. We, we bring, work with PD and bring in the tow trucks,
and start towing vehicles so that we can keep going and its, it's just a parade of
vehicles getting towed out of there, usually between eighteen and twenty-five on
a given evening, uh, between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., when we're working there.
And the, the larger equipment begins to work the snow toward the middle of the
street, and here's a motor grader working on that, and we build windrows down
the middle of the street. And then this piece of equipment moves in, uh -uh oh -
lost our picture here.
Let me ...Can we take a short recess?
Bailey: Yes
Fosse: (inaudible) It may have. Do you want me to run upstairs and get a different projector?
OK.
Bailey: Yes, go ahead.
Fosse: Five minutes?
Bailey: Yes.
Helling: Sure.
(BREAK)
Fosse: Phew. Just ran three flights of stairs. (Laughter) See how things go here. OK. Back to
this. This, this is our snow-blower. It's somewhat of a nocturnal piece of
equipment, you don't see that during the day very much because we, we use it at
night, it's not something we want to get out and, and mix with pedestrians of
course. (Laughter) It will fill a truck in, in just about fifty seconds, and if you
haven't watched it work, it's it's really fantastic, so, next time we have a big snow
set your alarm, come downtown at 2:00 in the morning (laughter) and you can
observe it. It's a lot of fun to watch, and it's, it's just well-orchestrated the way
they all move through and get the trucks filled up. Uh, as the trucks fill, they go
down to the Riverside Drive Public Works site, and, and dump down there. And,
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here is, one of the, well, this is the morning after we had that, that ten inch snow,
so we had a lot of snow to deal with and worked into the daylight hours, and you
can see the snow-blower filling the truck ,and the windrow that they're working
from is actually wider than the snow-blower. So he's got, um, two end-loaders
behind him re-windrowing that for a second pass back there. But you'll see there
are three trucks there -one, two, three-when this one pulls off another one
comes back in and they just keep going. And those, those go down, and as I said,
they dump by Riverside Drive (throat clearing). I took this picture in December
because it looked impressive, and I didn't realize that, that would just kept
building throughout the year, and, uh, toward the end of the year, even from three-
quarters of a mile away you couldn't get the whole snow-pile in the picture. And
if you zoom in, on the top right there, you'll see somebody's been up there. I'm
thinking maybe its Chuck Hess (chuckles from listeners).
But one of the things that allows us to get that pile pushed up the way we do is, is
this bulldozer right here. And the University brings their snow down as well, and
in exchange for having a place to put their snow, they supply the bulldozer and
operator. It's just a, a good relationship, it's another example of one of the ways
we work very well together.
Hayek: Hey, uh, Rick,
Fosse: Yes.
Hayek: Several photos ago you showed the uh trucks and the uh end-loaders .. .
Fosse: Mmm-hm.
Hayek: Aside from those contracting trucks, that picture, is the rest of that equipment city-
equipment?
Fosse: Uh, some of it we rent. In the wintertime we rent five large end-loaders, like you see
back here.
Hayek: OK.
Fosse:...to supplement the fleet ofend-loaders that we already have, but it doesn't pay for us to
own those year-round, so we only rent those in the winter months.
Hayek: Thank you.
Fosse: Mmm-hm. Moving on to Parking, they have the challenge of keeping our parking ramps
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open, our surface lots going and they really, they can't use salt on structures like
this. It's not a good idea, there's a lot of steel inside that concrete because its
structural concrete, as opposed to our roads that just sit on the dirt, uh, so if they
want to maximize the life they need to just, take the snow off of there, and uh,
that, that's where you want to have your skilled operators up there because you
don't want them going over the side when they're dumping from five stories up,
and then getting snow down and then, then trucking it out of there. Then, as I
said, these are also the trucks that do the surface lots, help us out with side streets
as necessary, and do the alleys downtown.
Um, Parks Department, as I've said, it does that long list of things in there, and,
uh, the work on our trails, and one of the keys to, to being successful at clearing
trails is getting out there before you get pedestrian traffic on it. And we know that
from clearing our sidewalks at home. Boy, once people walk on it it's tough to
get that off. And our surfaces for walking we really do try and treat to a different
standard than those of our roads. We want those so that pedestrians can walk and
not fall down whereas roads are more for, for vehicles. And they also do, the, the
Central Business District, which was, uh, at least the pedestrian plaza within the
Central Business District down there.
Now Housing is responsible for responding to complaints about snow removal on
sidewalks, and in the downtown area the business owners are responsible for that
ten feet adjacent to their buildings, and many of them clear all the way out to the
curb, which is a good thing. Uh, some of them, uh, don't clear at all, but this is
one of those challenging areas where you get a lot of foot traffic on the snow as
its falling and it makes it tough to clear. Uh, but Housing also responds to
complaints out in neighborhoods where, where things aren't shoveled. They hear
from folks that, that say it's, it's very difficult to clear, and it is, uh, but usually the
neighbors have been able to get something done on theirs, uh. This, this picture
shows a couple different problems, we've got a sidewalk that's not cleared, but
also you can see that somebody's pushed some snow up here that has spilled over
onto the sidewalk, and the way the state code is crafted, the homeowner is only
responsible for natural accumulations, of which that big blob of snow is not a
natural accumulation. So that's not something that the City can go out and, uh,
ask the property owner to shovel, and if they don't, we bill it back to them. Is that
accurate, Sarah? Did I explain that correctly? So those non-natural
accumulations are an issue for us.
Now there are places where people have shoveled or used their snow-blower,
made a good effort, but there's still ice underneath that, it's a problem, it
generates complaints, and one of the things, one of the tools we provide our
citizens is both at Mercer Park and at City Park we have piles of sand, sand-salt
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mix that anybody can get abucket-load and take back to their house. And I've
found that just afive-gallon bucket-load, cut the bottom out of a softener bottle to
use for your scooper-spreader, and you're, you're pretty well good for the winter.
It works out pretty well. And we've had good luck with those piles in that we
haven't had commercial operators coming and taking a whole pick-up load of it.
People are pretty honest about it and they just take it a bucket at a time. It's a nice
thing.
So let's look at some of the unique aspects of this winter, and, uh, we're going to
look at a few of the statistics here. Comparing snowfall: sixty inches, plus or
minus a little bit, depending on which source you look at, uh, compared to our
average, uh, which is in the mid-thirties. Now we looked back and, and tried to
finds an average year, and, uh, I think '02-'03, is that right Bud? Is that the year
we zeroed in on? That's the last average year that we had. And, and we looked at
our statistics for that year. Overtime hours, tremendous difference there, and if
you go back, and look at the dates of our storms they were almost exclusively on
weekend and holidays. It was just a nasty year that way. Um, salt, we used a lot
more salt, uh, we used a little bit more sand. Now, if you go back in time to '02-
'03, that's, that's before we did much.tweaking with the way we that we treated
our streets, to use more of a sand, uh, uh, a mix that had more sand in it than we
would use today. So this, it, it's a tough comparison to make. But when you look
at total expense, now those, the, the expenses from our average year are adjusted
to today's dollar, that is, we put in today's unit prices for sand, today's unit prices
for labor, and salt, for comparison, and it was just about a half a million dollars
more this year than what we would pay in an average year. We were talking
about that last night a little bit .. .
Bailey: Mmm-hm.
Fosse: ... uh, budgeting amendments. If you recall the year started out with, with a really
nasty ice storm, and, uh we had more than one. Some were, were pretty kind of
spectacular, kind of neat to look at. And, uh, that is, unless you work for
MidAmerican and then they're, they're a scary thing to look at. Uh, if you recall
our worst ice storm was followed by, by two or three days of just calm overcast.
And we're all kind of nervous about what are we going to get first. Are we going
to get wind or are we going to get sunshine? Because we had two very different
outcomes, depending on how that weather breaks. Fortunately, we got sunshine.
And we had a fun day of watching stuff fall of the, the power lines and the trees,
but it was such a relief to see that stuff just drop, rather than the wind coming and
bringing all those trees down that have that extra weight on them.
But we also had a lot of snow. Besides the ice, we of course had a lot of snow
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this winter. And it was (clears throat), excuse me, uh, came in all sorts of forms.
We had blizzards. This is one of our, one of our plow-trucks is in the ditch here
and we really can't afford to have them out of service for any length of period, so
we got a tow truck out there, getting him out of the ditch, during a blizzard. Now
that's a tough thing to do, but we got to keep them on the road. Um, I, I did hear
the county was criticized because they pulled their, their trucks off during some
blizzard conditions like this, and what you got to remember about their operations
is they're operating in remote areas, so if there's an accident, they're people can't
just get out of the truck and walk to a house for assistance. They're out in the
middle of nowhere, so, uh, I, I understand completely the decisions that they
made.
Uh, February was, was the worst of it for us. And we had a series of storms that
just followed the, the worst pattern; it packed everything we don't like. It started
out rain, changed to freezing rain, then heavy snow, and then we dropped into
deep freeze. And, and dropped so quickly it was before we could get everything
cleared from the streets. And that's what really hurt us. Once that stuff froze in
place we were in trouble out there. Uh, so, the, the storm started out with, with
water forming on the roads; we had to get out and, and clear the intakes, clear the
ice and snow form intakes and we went very deep into our staff, got a lot of
people out that, to do that. Because what we don't want is, of course, for that to
freeze on the road. That would, that would be a really bad thing for us. The snow
came -this is Dale's street again-uh, and then, for those streets that we didn't
get the snow off of, for whatever reason, before it turned cold, it, it just turned
into this terrible ice pack. And it was uh, um, pictures and words just don't really
do justice to what it was like to drive on that. It was, it was nasty for the people
who lived there.
Uh, some of the streets we didn't get to just from a time thing, before it froze, that
storm changed that quickly. Other streets, and there were a number of these
where we, we just couldn't get through because of parked cars. And, and you're
not going to get a plow, uh, between a couple of vehicles like this, and it's
surprising how often we come across that. And, um, when you're dealing with
deep snow, you, you need at least three feet clear for one of these vehicles to get
by, because you're pushing out a lot of material that's going to be coming up like
that So there's no way you're going to sneak between a couple of vehicles like
this. And then this is the result. We, uh, have this stuff stuck to the road, and uh,
it was a very frustrating experience for us because we just could not get it off, no
matter how hard we tried, no matter what equipment we tried we couldn't get it
off the roads. Now the normal cure for this type of situation is you dose it heavy
with salt, and you melt it off. But we didn't have the salt to do that this winter.
Uh, the whole Midwest was running out of the salt because of the ice storms and
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the snow that we had. And we were reliant on shipments of salt coming in. We
were always happy to see this truck. I don't know how Bud managed it but he, he
kept shipments coming and getting them in when we needed it most, and uh, we
dump out front. This is what twenty-five tons of salt looks like. It's dumped out
there, that's one truckload. And then we push that in the building. This building
holds about six hundred tons. We used 3,400 tons total this winter, and our new
facility will hold 3,000 tons. So, we're, we're going to be able to purchase in the
off-season and store a lot more. We'll, we'll come back to that a little bit later.
(Clears throat.) But by February, we were at the point of our salt supply where
our only option was to, uh, --thank you, Dale-our only option was to, to blend
what little salt we had with sand. And you did that about 4:1, 5:1 ratios, so you'd
have five part sand to one part salt. And what that did was it'd just keep the sand
from freezing into clumps, so it'd continue to go through the sander, through the
trucks, but it didn't provide much melting capability. Uh, so we couldn't get that
stuff off the streets. Uh, there it is just, just blending it. It's not a high tech
procedure; you put down out the bucket and just blend it.
And complaints were mounting. Absence of any fancy software, we used a, a
pin-map, and um, the only good thing about this, as you can see, that-that-the, it's
pretty well spread throughout the city. It wasn't like there was a particular area
that was a lot worse than others. LJh, but, our break came, it was like the last
week in February, we had one more storm on the horizon, and then just beyond
that was a small window of opportunity where there was going to be about thirty-
six hours where we would have enough temperature and sunshine to perhaps go
after that. And, uh, that lined up with a, with a weekend, which turned out to be a
good thing, because uh, because it fell on a weekend, people were home and
could move their cars and we could get out and get a lot of work done. We spent
about five days preparing for that, hoping that that forecast would come true. It
did. Uh, we, we mobilized all of our equipment and we also hired private end-
loaders like you see here to help us, as well as a number of trucks that would get
in and clear that. In all, we did seventy streets that weekend, and started peeling it
loose. Now if you're a geologist, looking at this slide you're going to go, "Oh, I
can see all three February storms there." You can see them just stratified in that,
that ice that came up off the road. Um, and we knew we were going to leave big
hunks laying around, seven-hundred pounders that nobody's going to move on
their own, so part of what we were doing was we brought in small equipment to
pull those thing out of people's driveways, because we knew that it would be
unmanageable once it started to break loose. So I said, we worked and slid, and
we got seventy streets done. That's a pile we didn't want to leave in anybody's
driveway, so we, we trucked all this out and we got over 800 truckloads of, uh, ice
out that weekend. And it was a good thing because the weather after that, we had
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another three or four weeks where that wouldn't have, that opportunity didn't
present itself again. So we were very pleased to accomplish that. We spent just
shy of $50,000 that weekend, getting that done.
One of the things that helped us, is, uh, our folks got together with, with Johnson
County, uh secondary roads folks, and talking about techniques, and they loaned
us this, this cutter blade to put on our motor grader. It's always a good thing
when you get staff from different agencies together to talk about techniques, good
things come of that. And what it did is, is allowed our grader to be more effective
at cutting through that ice, and we got a lot more productivity out of it that
weekend. LTh, so that was a good thing for us.
Now this, this ice was bonded so tightly to the pavement that it actually pulled out
some of the joint material, the crack filling material that we had in place, and you
don't see that happen very often. But we saw a lot of this around town this
winter, so we got that to replace this year. It was also a hard year on equipment.
It was also a hard year on equipment. We all know that from driving our cars
around town, but it was hard on the big heavy equipment as well. Because we're
beating at it so hard trying to get that stuff off the roads, um. This is the wearing
edge on a plow, right here, and you replace those when they wear down or break.
(Clears throat.) Excuse me. This winter was brutal on them. Uh, we went
through 145 of these edges, uh, this winter, because they either broke or wore out,
and its $85 a piece just for the materials, and then of course you have to get them
on there. But, you know, that was, it was tough just keeping our plows in good
shape out there. And then, springs; we've gone a decade without breaking springs
on a truck, and we, we, uh, broke springs on five dump-trucks, two fire-trucks,
and one recycling truck. And it kept our maintenance staff busy replacing those.
These are terrific mechanics; they can take on just about anything. And its, it's a
tough dirty job replacing a loose string, but they, they got it done.
Um, even out at the landfill there was some impacts on operations. This is one of
our customers out there. We call this a frozen load. They, they lifted their truck,
the load was frozen in it, so normally you pull ahead, it slides out, but here they
pulled ahead, it stayed in place. They have a very high center of gravity and if
you, you hit a soft spot or get off kilter a little bit, over you go. It did knock the
frozen load loose, so something positive came of that. (Laughter.)
LEEDS save us a lot of money on electricity, and, and one of the reasons they do
is they don't give off much waste heat. And that's, that's great except for two or
three days out of the year and we were getting a little nervous with the ice that
was building up on our lenses, uh, this winter with some of the storms, that was
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troublesome.
Our cameras that provide information to the signals so that they know when to
change, actually have little heaters in them so that they, they don't go blind in a
snow storm. It'll, it'll melt that off and, and maintain clear vision.
Here's a problem we didn't see coming, some of our lower signals were, were hit
by the ice and snow that was piled high on top ofsemi-trucks, and broke the
bottoms off, there was so much snow on the trucks.
This was along Burlington Street, somebody was testing out our break-away
lights, maybe an engineering student (laughter) see if they really work the way
they're designed. In a tight corner like that, you, you have break away mountings
on them and they really work nicely. There was barely a dent on the front of this
car, and it, it took the light pole right down.
We talked Monday night a little bit about, uh, projects, and some of the design
compromises that were made. And one of them we did on the Summit Street
bridge. We put in a narrower bridge than what we normally would in that
situation; that's what came out of the design process. And what we sacrificed
there was snow storage on the bridge. So there's quite a fair amount of snow that
was finding its way over the barrier rail onto the sidewalk and making more work
for terry's folks to clear the sidewalks. But, in the big picture, I think it was a
good compromise to make on that project, was a very good project.
We also learned that, some days you just have to pull your services off the road.
And, uh, we had one of those days in February where we had a lot of snow, and
all of our equipment, not all, but a good share of our equipment was diverted to
helping buses that were stuck or recycling trucks. The garbage men, our refuse
workers tried to push their own out. But it, it just was evident by about 9:00 that
morning that we needed to pull our services off the road, and we did that. And
people were very understanding of that. And the nice thing is that some of our
refuse workers are very good equipment operators, so they were able to come
over and help us out there as well.
Um, one of the, the ...yeah, wanted to make sure I was in the right spot here.
One of the problems that was identified in the downtown area is, is, is for
pedestrian traffic, and that's this area between the curb ramp and between the area
of the street that we clear. And that`s this no-man's zone right here that doesn't
get attended to. And that's something we need to figure out how to take care of
because that's an impediment that, to travel out there.
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Um, we also have problems where people do, they do a great job of shoveling the
curb ramps, they get them clear, and then a truck goes by -you can see that fly
off the, off the blade there and fills that back in. And then we're, we're back
relying on the goodwill of the adjoining property owners to shovel that back out
again. That's, that's just a reoccurring thing with the back and forth of the snow,
uh, that makes it difficult to get around as a pedestrian.
Uh, we, we talked a little bit about the difficulty in, in getting in and getting
around parked vehicles, and Iowa City has a snow emergency ordinance but it's
very archaic and the last time it was, it was enacted was at least over twenty-five
years ago. It was back when, when uh Neil Berlin was here, and it, Iowa City's
unique because of all the on-street parking we have here with, with the University
in Iowa City here and it makes it tough to find a workable ordinance, but it's
something we want to, we want to think about doing because, occasionally we can
get around, you see the second car in this photo? Yeah. Interestingly, the people
we here from in these situations, not so much the owner of the car but the person
who lives next door who now has to shovel an additional ten feet of driveway to
get out to the traveled portion of the road. And they, they're the ones who want to
get the road cleared, get the car out of there, so the road can get cleared.
Uh, but we have this, I talked earlier about we have a lot of on-street storage of
vehicles and after the storm they returned one by one, and get their car out, and
twenty minutes after they're out somebody else is back in there. Usually spring
break is our opportunity to clear that area out, and there was actually still ice on
the ground at spring break this year. Uh, normally we just do street sweeping
(inaudible).
Uh, another problem, regulatory type problem is, is people pushing snow into the
public right of way, off of private property into the public right of way. Uh, this
is an area that we just cleared out the night before, we trucked all the snow out of
there, and this is the downtown zone, and it was full by noon the next day. We
did talk to that, that particular hauler. He got all that out of here was very, very
cooperative there. Uh, but in other parts of town we have this stuff, where it piles
up, people push it out in the right of way, and here it was a, a sight distance
problem. Normally I don't worry too much about people piling snow in the right
of way until it creates a safety problem, or there's property damage associated
with it. Here there's a safety issue, other places where it piles up it begins to
damage some of our landscaping that we have in medians for instance, and then
we have a property damage issue that we need to deal with. Also, this, this is
some snow that was pushed out of a condominium association and you can see
they didn't get it all the way across the street, and this freezes under, becomes just
a solid block of ice and then over time when we have blizzards and drifts they
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become disguised if you will, you just can't see them there, they're concealed.
SO when we're going along with our wing plow, if you hit one of those, it can do
a lot of damage to our wing plow quickly, couple thousand dollars, and um, break
um, and you either have a lot of repair work or replacement associated with that.
So we kind of, trying to figure out how to get a handle on this pushing of snow
into the, into the public right of way.
We heard a lot form, from folks about not being able to get to cross walk buttons.
Um, was going to meet twice, tried to meet with the Johnson County Association
of, uh, Disabled Persons and both, both times the meeting was cancelled because
of snow storms, uh, but, but this is one of the problems that they were struggling
with as well as just other people using the streets.
iJh, we heard from bicyclists, that where people pile snow around bike racks.
Some business owners do a very good job of clearing out the bike racks. The
amazing thing in this town is we have bicycle commuters every day of the year,
even the nastiest blizzard. And um, I was, I was reading in Venture Cycling this
winter, they had an article about bicycle safety in communities and they identified
that the single most important feature for bicycle safety in a community is the
number of bikes on the road. And, and, the more bikes on the road the lower your
accident rate is because people become acclimated to that. So from that
standpoint Iowa City is making steady progress here, because each year we see
more people out there, riding their bikes.
Um, things we're working on already. In, in the budget process we have in there
for adding an additional snow route, so we go from eleven to twelve. Uh, there's
a drawing of our new salt storage building, had the public hearing on that last
night, so now it's in the bidding process. And I think, Matt pointed out that this
building does on one side have a heated space so we can keep anend-loader and
our on-call truck there. If you recall, our trucks are kind of stored all over town in
the wintertime, any heated spaces we can find or rent. SO we've got that
underway. One of the neat features that the new buildings going to have is is out
in front where we work with the salt. Uh, right now we have some very
concentrated run-off that comes from that, and that's not a good thing for the
environment in the near, in the area right around it. So we're going to have a
storm sewer system that collects that, and we're going to have it go into a cistern
so that we can, this is good stuff that we can use. Its good salt that we paid for
and we can put it to good use. If there's more than we can use it will go into the
sanitary sewer rather than the storm sewer.
Um, so, we're happy to see this winter go away (laughter). Spring is here. This is
the River Run on Sunday,'still quite brisk that day, but it was a nice day. Um, let
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me wrap up by just talking about a couple of things that we're already working
on. We can go for lights is you like lights.
Things we've learned. We've confirmed a couple of things that we're already
working on and that is that the new salt storage facility and the additional route
are justified, we don't have to have that nagging feeling that we're jumping the
gun on that. Um, we know we need to improve our phone system down at the
Streets Department. That was a source of frustration for people calling in when
they were saying we're having a difficult time getting through. That needs to be
fixed. Uh, we need to improve our information on our website, and update it to
be consistent with our practices. The last five years we've been, we've been
changing the way that we treat streets, and trying to improve our processes, but
what we found is that they were inconsistent with some of our "Frequently Asked
Questions" that were on our website. So we pulled those this winter, we're going
to get those tuned up and get them back out there again. We know we need to
improve out communications with the Downtown Association so that the public
and private efforts to work better together down there, uh. And we also, as, as I
showed you, adjusted our techniques for how we deal with the deep snows during
the winter in the downtown area. We've enhanced our ability to tap into internal
resources such as Water, Wastewater, and Engineering for getting additional staff
needed right now, in emergency, to clear intakes. And one of the things that, that
we touched on earlier is we need to decide as a community do we want to
examine and update our snow emergency ordinance into something that might be
workable for a unique community, that we are in that regard. So, overall, I think
our folks did a very good job with the resources they had available to them. Um,
I'm not sure that we could as a community really afford to, to be staffed up and
ready for that type of winter every year, but there's certainly some things that we
could do to better posture ourselves for future, future winters. So with that, I open
it up to you all.
Bailey: Questions for Rick?
Wilburn: Rick, how many miles of streets do we have, and then how many miles of arterials?
Fosse: We have about 270 miles of streets, and I don't have the breakout of arterials at the top of
my head, or lane miles, and that's really the important statistic here is how many
lane miles, uh each lane takes one pass to get done, so a four lane road takes more
work to get done than a two lane road. With our snow routes right t now we have
about fifty lane miles per plow, and ideally we'd like to get that down into the
thirties somewhere. When we add the additional snow route we'll get it down to
about forty-four, forty-two, somewhere in there, lane miles per route.
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Wilburn: You talk about the challenge of trying to balance, uh, posturing yourself for a real
heavy year when we get pummeled with snow and not being able to, to
reasonably afford carrying x-number of vehicles and staff to, to address it, but,
refresh my memory, how, what is the price for one of those vehicles?
Fosse: Bud, do you know off the top of your head?
Wilburn: Ballpark.
Fosse: What, what a plow truck, new plow truck fully outfitted? About $150,000-$160,00, and
then, then for each vehicle we need, uh, two staff members so that we can keep
that going twenty-four hours a day once it's part of our snow routes.
Wilburn: And then, uh, and maybe Sarah, maybe this might be a more appropriate question for
you, or maybe you might know about through the, um collective bargaining
agreement, uh, Dale. I had uh one, business owner suggest that the operators, the
individual operators should be going, should be prepared to go twenty-four hours
a day, you know we, obviously, for safety reasons, and risks, you, you can't do
that. How, how many hours can an individual operate?
Fosse: I think I can answer that. That's governed by the commun-uh, commercial driver's
license that they're all required to have and that's, that's a statewide, actually, a
federal standard that's out there. And during that first shift they can work a
maximum of sixteen hours, and then after that you need at least eight hours off,
and then you can go, twelve on, eight off, twelve on. But the way it works out for
us is its twelve on twelve off, after that initial sixteen hours.
Wilburn: I should let some other Council Members jump in before I ask more questions.
Bailey: Other questions for Rick?
Hayek: Uh, I was surprised by, uh the comparison of the average snowfall to what we had in '07-
'08. It didn't seem like all that much more; it was less than twice the amount.
Um, thinking about it, I remembered, a statistic somewhere, um I think the
number of snow events was dramatically more than we typically see.
Fosse: Yes.
Hayek: Does that explain the huge price difference between our average expenditures and what
we got hit with this year?
Fosse: It was the number of events, it was the type of events, remember, freezing rain doesn't,
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doesn't add up to be much for precipitation. You know, a half an inch of rain, uh,
can do a lot of damage. And, and the fact that it fell on weekends and holidays,
that, that really hurt us form an overtime perspective. And this is a crew that just
got done during the leaf vacc-ing. So for eight weeks they were working six day
weeks, including Saturdays to, to vac leaves. And then we went right into this, so,
it's been a long winter for them.
Bailey: Other questions?
Bailey: Do we do any pre-treating of streets?
Fosse: No we don't. No, that's something that some communities and the DOT do, and, and the
option we've taken on that is we're letting them work out the bugs for that.
Some, some applications can be troublesome, uh, other times it works out well.
Uh, but before we invest in that technology, we'll let we'll let somebody else
work out the bugs in it.
Bailey: And I assume that some of, of those applications are pretty expensive as well? Is that
accurate or is it?
Fosse: Well, it, it involves a couple things. You need to have the facilities to make your own
brine, the saltwater, and then you need to outfit your trucks with some sort of tank
or distribution method. So you either have trucks that do both salt and brine-
water or you have separate trucks that, that distribute the brine.
Bailey: Thanks.
Fosse: Mmm-hm.
Wright: Rick, you uh, mentioned our antiquated snow removal ordinance and I wondered if you
or, or Sarah, know what its teeth are?
(Inaudible)
Holecek: Well, I believe, it's been awhile since I've looked at it, that it is up to the City Manager
to declare a snow emergency and at that point I believe you do odd/even day
parking. Um, but that's just off the top of my head without familiarizing myself,
but, and, um, then if you don't comply of course with the odd/even day parking
then you're subject to ticketing and towing.
Correia: But the streets that don't have odd and even parking, like College Street or Jefferson or
(inaudible) .. .
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Holecek: It goes by day of the week.
Wright: Odd day or even day.
Holecek: Right. But which side of the street you're on goes by the day of the week, and I can't
recall whether Monday, Wednesday, Friday is the left side of the street ---
Correia: Ok, for all streets (inaudible) can only be on one side.
Holecek: For all streets, that's right, so you would only have single loading.
Fosse: That, that might cause confusion in neighborhoods where we have parking on one side
Monday, Wednesday, Friday day, for instance, the other side on Tuesday,
Thursday, Saturday.
Correia: Well, then on other streets where you can park on either side any day.
Fosse: Right. The, the key to any, to the success of any snow emergency ordinance is education.
That if, if we intend to use this, we need to get the worked out and let people
know what to expect. And that's, that's a big task when you're trying to get at a
population where a third of us are pretty well focused on studies.
Correia: Do we use any, uh, seasonal workers during the winter? For snow removal purposes?
Fosse:. We do, but, but the um, a lot of the equipment is, it requires a skill level that doesn't lend
itself to just hiring somebody off the street. And, and also you need that
commercial driver's license--
Correia: Mmm-hm.
Fosse: --to operate that equipment.
Hayek: I'm trying to understand the, the priority schedule or approach that we take. Where on
that list of priorities do what we refer to as the downtown fall, relative to the
emergency routes, arterials, that sort of thing?
Fosse: The downtown is one of the eleven snow routes, and within the downtown there's, there's
red green and blue routes so that, it's it's prioritized within itself there. And the
person assigned to that route implements that at the same time all other eleven
routes are being implemented. That make sense?
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Hayek: Yeah, and maybe another question to ask is, are the eleven zones, does the amount of
work required to clear each zone equate to that in the other zones, so that---
Fosse: That's our intent.
Hayek: OK.
Fosse: Yes. It's a hard thing to balance.
Hayek: So, to look at it that way, the downtown zone isn't necessarily going to get cleared any
faster than certain areas in other zones around town.
Fosse: That's right. That's right. Now the, until we go into the snow removal mode, and, and as
I've said a number of things need to fall in place for that, but we do like to get in
that snow removal trucking out of downtown. And something we've done this
year that's different from past, is, we, for small snow amounts we used to let three
or four storms, maybe five or six pile up until it gets to the point where we come
in in the night and do that removal effort. Because we'll spend between $14,000
and $18,000 in one night doing that. Um, what we did this year is we tried to do
it more often, maybe after just a couple small snow storms; we'd come in and do
that. We get it done quicker, it's more do-- the small end of that expense scale,
uh, but it does provide better service.
Hayek: Thanks.
Fosse: Mmm-hm.
O'Donnell: Would, would it do - it seemed like every storm sewer in town was plugged, there,
there was massive amounts of snow and ice on it and when we'd get a rain or, or
snow would melt it would collect there and end up on the street. Do we, do we
specifically go out and unplug the storm drains?
Fosse: Yes, yes. We keep an eye on the forecast and when we see something like that coming
up, we send out crews and they start opening them up in advance of a rain or
thaw, uh. But there are hundreds of the out there, and you just don't get them all.
And, and rain will show us where we didn't get there.
Bailey: On this overview, you have a "When We Do It" amount and type of snow precipitation,
so when do the plows go out if it's a regular snow event, at what point, I mean,
how much accumulation. You said that you don't have crews waiting.
Fosse: Right. There's, there's really no typical event.
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Bailey: OK.
Fosse: And, and, it's the Police Department that will let us know when conditions are getting to a
point where we need to get mobilized. And that can depend on, uh, pavement
temperature, the type of precipitation - if it's freezing rain, or fluffy snow, or a, a
wet snow -they all behave differently when they hit the pavement.
Helling: Rick, maybe you could explain the on-call set-up, the way we do that?
Fosse: Yes. We have, uh, two teams, and we keep one team on call -well, a team is on call
continuously during the winter months, and they alternate one week on and one
week off. And, and what that means for the people who are on call is that they
need to be ready to come in any hour of the day or night, if they're in during the
day, uh, and prepared to do that, and prepared to do things. And that can be
tough, you know, it can cut into your personal life during the holidays, and parties
and that sort of thing, because you can't have alcohol, you need to be ready to go
at twenty-four hours a day.
Correia: So once, once a call goes out, so how, so um, the Police Department-- Its midnight. It's
been snowing for an hour, let's say. They determine, OK, we need to get plows
on the roads, who do they call? They call .. .
Fosse: We have a contact for them, and then the word goes out to the whole on call team and
they come in -
Correia: So how, what amount of time does it take?
Bailey: To mobilize?
Correia: To mobilize?
Fosse: Bud, would you like to come up and give a few of the de-uh, with us tonight is Bud
Stockman. He's our Streets Superintendent, and really manages all these folks, so
he's got the best details here.
Bailey: Thanks for being here, Bud.
Stockman: Good evening. Uh, yeah, the on-call starts out with two teams~of eleven. We have
what we call the on-call "first-up" gentleman. They are the one that the police do
contact right away. And it is up to that person, he will go out and he will check
whether it needs just the on truck for a slick call, main break, or something like
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that. Then if, if the weather's bad and its going to get worse, he automatically just
has the rest of the team, which will be ten more folks called in, immediately.
And, uh, the way its set up our trucks are ready to go. They're in the heated
building. They are usually loaded with material. So that as soon as they get the
call, they go to their truck, and they -each one has their own route. They j ust go
out, start in on their route. Priority one, would be the red.
Correia: So thirty minute, sixty minutes? Bud, what do you think the average-
Stockman: Uh, it varies depending on how slick it is. This year, sometimes it was just a little bit
longer because we had ice storms compared to a snow. Um, the majority of the
time, I'm saying the, the longest it would be would be twenty-five minutes, for
the longest person. Most of them live right here in town so it's just a matter of
getting in there --- well, getting dressed if its midnight, one in the morning-uh,
to get there fifteen minutes they can usually be in the truck and on the road.
Wilburn: I know it will vary by the amount of snow and slickness, all that, but, uh, what's maybe
perhaps the range of times it takes one pass through the first priority, uh, for snow
removal?
Stockman: Uh, depending on the time of day, if we got a lot of traffic it's going to be a lot
longer, if it's at night, usually, uh, within hour and a half to two hours, they can
have the main, their route pretty well run. At least the first route. And then,
they'll go back, they'll pick up -there's a lot of places, everybody knows his own
route, so they know a certain street or certain hill or something like that is usually
worse than these other spots, so they'll get everything first and then they'll maybe
even go back to anywhere where they have a problem area in town, their route
and they'll continue to work with that.
Bailey: Other questions for Bud? Thank you.
Stockman: Thank you.
Bailey: Other questions for Rick?
Wright: Rick, you mentioned, uh, going to sidewalk maintenance now, the downtown, you
mentioned, uh, ten foot rule, ten foot out from the store.
Fosse: Yes.
Wright: That's what the shopkeepers are responsible for?
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Fosse: Mmm-hm.
Wright: Anybody responsible for those bike racks?
Fosse: No. They kind of fall into a, a no-man's zone. Some property, or some businesses do a
terrific job of clearing clear out to the curb and then taking care of the bike racks.
Other ones use it as a place to pile the snow, because that's a place, surely nobody
will be using this time of year.
(Sounds of agreement from some Council Members)
Wright: That's, that's something I did run into quite a bit with the, folks did pile a lot of snow
around their bike racks. It was a, a challenge.
Correia: But, but, does the Parks Department clear the parts of the Pedestrian Mall from the
sidewalks back? That the businesses are not responsible for? Is that?
Fosse: Well let's have Sherry come up, and give us the details on that. Parks focus is in the
Pedestrian Mall, but you know, we're talking a lot along Washington, Dubuque,
Iowa and that's (inaudible).
Sherry Thomas: Hi, I'm Sherry Thomas. I'm with the Central Business District. We do the
snow removal in the plaza, and some of the other areas we're assigned through
the Parks Department. Uh, your question was about bike racks in?
Correia: So, I guess, the, so the area, in the Central Business District between what the business
owner, or renter, whatever, is responsible for Blearing, and then the rest of the area
up to the street, that may have bike racks there.
Thomas: We are just ourselves; myself and my other two people on my crew just do the
Pedestrian Plaza; and then the Linn Street along the Public Library.
Correia: OK.
Thomas: So when we have bicycle racks in those areas we try and keep at least the majority of
them cleared, as much as we can. Um, and we do all the snow removal there from
the business to the planter, and then through the fire lane, and then crosswalks
through that area. So, we kind of do the whole area at once with the bike racks
included.
Hayek: To follow-up on Amy's question, if, let's say you're on Washington Street, and ten feet
from the business storefront toward the street only takes you so far and then
there's a gap of I don't know how many feet to the curb, uh, the property owner
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or renter isn't responsible for it. Is the City then not, not tackling that area?
Thomas: We don't do anything on our streets outside of our Pedestrian Plaza.
Hayek: That might be something we want to think about.
Correia: Yeah, I think so.
Helling: Parks is responsible for assisting Streets at night when we, and clearing that, where
there's snow in that area as much as possible into the street so it can be picked up,
and I suspect that some of that snow around the bike racks will get addressed
then. But I don't think they have time to clean it out because it's a little more
tedious to shovel around those objects.
Bailey: Mmm-hm.
Fosse: Yeah, I think, what Dale said sums it up very well. That in that, in that zone going
outside the ten feet, we'll get that with a skid loader when we do the snow
removal downtown, but it's not the same level, level of service that you're going
to get with a hand shovel.
Bailey: Other questions?
Hayek: Plenty, but we've got people waiting here
Bailey: Sure.
Hayek: --who want to speak with us.
Bailey: Thank you, Rick. And, certainly we do appreciate the work that the crews did this
winter. We know they worked long, hard hours. And especially that one
weekend where they cleared so much ice, it was, it was great to see. So now we'd
like to open up for the public. Um, we'll do the usual thing: please state your
name for the record, limit your comments to five minutes or less would even be
better. Uh, we're here to sort of problem solve and be constructive, so please try
to focus on that approach as well.
Jim Clayton: Jim Clayton, Iowa City (clears throat). Sherry mentioned the fact that the City's
Parks Department takes care of the Pedestrian Mall. That goes back to when the
mall was established, so I don't have to shovel my sidewalk, I can ignore it. So if
you fall down and break your neck on Washington Street, it may well be that the
property owner is at fault. But on the Ped Mall it's the City that's responsible.
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The only snow that we have to take care of, uh, snow and ice, is what falls off our
building, in the process of the storm or melting. Uh, the difference this year
between past years, and we've been downtown in our business for twenty-seven
years, so this is by far the worst winter we've had, uh, it was the ice. Pure and
simple. Uh, you could go down on Washington Street, where they use private
contractors, after an ice storm and the sidewalks were down to bare concrete. But
because of the time that people take to get to the Ped Mall, with students walking
on it, it was ice, and sometimes it was ice for weeks on end. Uh, so I think we
need a separate plan in the future to deal with freezing rain, sleet, and ice. Some
way to get a priority to get those areas downtown where people are walking.
I would also carry that over into the parking ramps. During the month of
December, January and February, our parking downtown is reduced by almost
twenty-five percent. In the ramps, the upper floors were closed. They can't use
salt on there and I understand that. But it would have been far cheaper to pay
somebody a high priority overtime to go up and scrape slush before it froze than
to come back later on and try to chip it off, with the front-end of an end-loader.
So there were al lot of times when the ramp said "Full", and it was full because
the upper floors were unavailable for parking. And that again is an issue not of
snow. I will say when we called to complain, the City was responsive. They
came down and did the best they could under the circumstances. We had face to
face meetings with them. Uh, they came down and visited and saw what was
going on, and that was good. But in many cases, it-was too late because it got
cold. So I'd like to see some kind of a plan that's going to go in place that will
address what we do to make sure our pedestrians are safe on the Ped Mall, and
what we do to make sure that those drivers that we're bringing downtown, have a
place to park. Because of they're on the street, they only compound everything.
Thanks.
Bailey: Thanks, Jim. Rick, can we use salt on the bricks on the plaza?
Fosse: Yes, we do, and uh, actually we use, instead of sodium chloride they use calcium
chloride, and, and that has a better, more effective range, so it does a better job.
Bailey: Thanks. Other comments from the public?
Dave Dvorsky: My name's Dave Dvorsky. I live on the 300 block of North, North Liber-
excuse me, 300 block of 3rd Avenue, which is just north of Court Street, which is
a red route and I have (inaudible), some are green and blue and purple. But I can
see the red routes; I see them going all the time. Um, we do appreciate all the
efforts that the City when into cleaning the streets and we can see them. I'm, um
somewhat amazed that we have such really good equipment, we hire such quality
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talented individuals to maintain this equipment and then we then we try and make
their job even more difficult by putting them on the street with parked cars. I
think parking is becoming a real issue in snow removal. We saw that, uh, this
year. If you looked up six, seven hundred block, block of Washington Street for
example, it was very treacherous. I compound this because I, I, in my
professional life I'm the assistant director of the ambulance services, Johnson
County Ambulance, and they have to operate in similar conditions as the plow
drivers do. And it makes it very difficult for emergency services to operate
(inaudible, cough) parked cars with furrows the snow plows have to leave because
they can't get the snow completely cleared from the streets. So I'd really like to
encourage the City to look at, uh, developing a ordinance that would be able to
remove vehicles from the street so that the plow drivers can do what it is they do
so well, and make the streets wide enough for everybody to use. Thanks.
Bailey: Thank you. Other comments?
Pastor Jacob Butler: Good evening, panel, uh, Jacob Butler. I reside in North Liberty, but I
spend six days a week in Iowa City. I work in Iowa City. My church, my
ministry is in Iowa City. So, uh, I speak on behalf of not just myself, but a lot of
my parishioners, uh, as well. I have a lot of concerns, and trying to be as brief,
and I might not cover everything, and um, and Mr. Rick, he was, uh, he was on
the money with a lot of things he said but it's a lot of holes in it to me, uh, that I
think need to be addressed. What I mean by holes is that I worked in snow
removal, uh, previously when I was in Chicago. I spent twelve years at the
Department of Streets and Sanitation on that first team snow removal. Uh, I got a
lot of questions concerning the snow removal and how it's done. I think I've
read, if I'm not mistaken in the paper, and I've heard a lot of residents talk about
the policy on snow removal, far as, the trucks, when they drop they blades. I
heard something; it might be like three inches or something before they use the
plows, correct me if I'm wrong.
(Inaudible)
Bailey: (Inaudible) You have to use the mike.
Fosse: It might be best to wait for, for all of you---
Bailey: Yeah, I think that would probably---
Butler: OK, OK.
Bailey:----be the better thing.
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Butler: Yeah, well, if, if that being the case, I was just concerned about that because even when,
uh, not dropping salt or sand, uh, you know, I've seen trucks, plows, riding
around during a snow storm with they plows up. And I don't see the, (clears
throat), you know, I don't understand that. I really don't. It's hard for me to, uh,
just comprehend because my thing is if you're using your plow to remove snow,
and the plow is on the truck, utilize it, even if you don't have any salt or sand.
Now, uh, from my experience, some, some guys might say, well, they're not
instructed to by supervision, this is not my route so, I'm not going to plow. But
even in the event that you're traveling t and from the salt pile to get some salt or
to reload, you can drop your plow and open up the lane behind you. Because it'll
be a lot safer for the, uh, not only for the drivers in the automobiles but for the uh,
uh, passen--- I mean the, uh, the pedestrians on the street. So, I'm concerned
about that for one. Number two, is, uh, working on the streets. I've traveled the
streets a lot and I've seen where the trucks don't do it, uh, I would say a accurate
job of removal. And you addressed that talking about the sewers and the drains.
But I've seen four and five feet of snow and ice where they haven't gotten to the
curb and pushed it back. And I want, I want that to be addressed. Why can't they
open up the entire street, instead of just making a pass? OK, that's, uh, number
two. Also, uh, this thing about the police, he addressed that, and I'm, I know I
heard him say it was, they not going to pay anybody to just be out on the street,
when there's nothing going on. But if we had a system set up where you knew
the snow, or the ice storm was on the way, shouldn't it be, wouldn't it be wise to
have a experienced, uh, personnel on the street, not, not the police who might be
tied up with other matters, criminal activities, etc., someone who's out there
looking, on high alert, have those guys not just standing by, but on call in the lot
when you know it's there, and make the call and get the guys on the street.
Because I saw this winter where a snow storm hit on a Sunday, and in less than a
half hour, they couldn`t work the streets. But they guys were still yet coming in.
I didn't see a plow. I didn't see s plow. So I gather at this time they was on call,
on they way, but in the meantime we're getting buried with snow. So I don't
understand that. I think it's a matter, it's my personal opinion, of fiscal
accountability. SO my question is, when do we draw the line on snow removal,
and stop being fiscally responsible, and let's treat snow, a snow storm as an
emergency, and deal with it accordingly. There must be some planning, some
preparation and some execution, OK. Downtown. You guys were just addressing
that issue. Downtown has to be the highlight of the city, in any city, so why
would downtown just get the same attention, uh, as some less arterial streets on
the outer wings of the city. All the trucks are downtown. Most of your visitors,
you know most of your tourists are downtown. I don't care if it whether it takes
two or three trucks, get them there and let's clean up downtown. Downtown is
downtown, you know. For downtown to be impassable during a snowstorm, you
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expect that somewhere where we don't have the trucks, don't have the personnel,
but when we got it, let's concentrate on downtown. So those are just a few of the
issues. But, uh, I would like to state concerning this salt, as I'm about to close,
we were out of salt for a long time. I watched it. I saw private companies getting
salt. So my thing is regardless of what it costs, or where it's got to come from, if
we need some salt, let's get some salt. Sand does not eat up ice. He said that. It
gives you some traction on the ice. We need some salt. We were out of salt, it
seemed like well over a month, while the streets were getting buried and we were
constantly getting snow storms. At what point do we stop saying, well, its, we're
over-budget, too much overtime, too much money, we've already gone over this
and gone over that. And let's recoup the cost later, but let's deal with the problem
now. See, I think personally what has happened is Iowa City has not been hit
with enough lawsuits from people falling on those sidewalks and in accidents
from lack of their efforts in snow removal. And that's why we're so lenient in
that ramp. So that's about all I got to say. I probably talked over my five
minutes.
Bailey: Thank you.
Butler: And I thank you for your time.
Bailey: Thank you. Rick, did you have some comments about some of those questions that he
posed?
Fosse: There was a question about the three inch rule. And that's, that's not a policy that we use
anymore. I think that was used quite some time ago.
Bailey: OK.
Fosse: And our, (clears throat) excuse me, the folks are dropping their plows when they deem it
the, the time is right to do that, there.. As far as how close we plow to the curbs,
uh, a couple things governing that. One is we've got the mailboxes that we don't
want to break off. The other is that we have, in many of our streets we have six
feet between the back of the curb and the sidewalks, and when we run out of snow
storage there, the alternative is it either gets pushed back onto the sidewalks, and
that, that's an unmanageable situation for the property owner or you begin to store
more of that snow in the street down there. So that's the situation there. Uh, as far
as letting fiscal constraints govern what we, what we do, there was never a time
this winter when Dale instructed us to pull back on our operations because of
fiscal, fiscal constraints. iJh, the, the, the charge from Dale was always "Do
what's necessary." Really what governed us was the salt supply throughout the
Midwest, and I thought we did a very good job with dealing with as much salt as
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we did. Normally you only buy 2,000 tons of salt, and as I said earlier, this year
we bought 3,400 tons. So it's hard to find that salt when you go above your
contract amount. Um, some communities were completely out for extended
periods. We were never completely out, but we were down to the point where,
where all we could use it for was to mix it in with the sand to keep the sand from
freezing.
Bailey: This new salt storage facility will be completed by next winter?
Fosse: Yeah, we sure hope so, yes.
Bailey: OK.
Correia: I, I have a question about the, the, um process I guess, uh, when, outside regular
business hours, so during regular business hours, the Streets Department is
watching the weather conditions, and you're ready to go in an instant. Is that?
OK. So it's after business hours when the process when the process sis we wait
for the police to call in. And, how, so does that happen, is there a watch
commander that that is charged to, or is it, um, police officers riding around start
to realize, "Oh, it's getting pretty bad out here. I'm going to call in to the watch
commander," or whoever, I'm just wondering how, and how are they, have they
received any training on things to watch for or look for or this type, you know,
what type of protocol is in place? Or is it more informal and maybe that's, would
be something to look at, if we're not going to have somebody physically that,
from the Streets Department, there 24 hours a day to watch for that, do we
formalize more the process with the Police Department, so those calls are maybe
getting in sooner, so the crew is mobilized quicker?
Fosse: Yeah. That's, that's certainly something we can work on. I'll let Bud address that, that in
more detail. And again, that's something that varies storm to storm. Some storms
have a very defined front, they come in, we can anticipate it and be there, uh,
when the storm's here. Others kind of trickle in, and, and those are the ones that
we need some help from PD on, on knowing just what is the right time to
mobilize.
Stockman: Yeah, to answer your question on that, uh, when I said that we had on call the
number one person or the "first up"person, in a lot of storms unless it's some that
we do not anticipate during the night that hit, that is when the Police Department
actually will be the ones that kind of get a hold of my number one person. Other
than that, the person that's on call "first up", that person al lot of times is already
in here when the snow starts. Because most of my guys, uh, we're looking at
some veterans that have 20-25 years, uh, they're well aware of what it going to
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do, and pretty well when it's going to do it, so at least that one person is in, and he
will not hesitate. If we, if he needs help, he's on the phone. A lot of times it is
before the storm actually hits. Because some people actually live to the west,
some live to the east, they keep in contact by cell phone right now, and they're
always calling each other. If it's snowing west and its moving east, then those
guys are on the alert, they're already in their way in, usually before the snow
storm hits. So, yeah, I'm sorry if it sounded like it took a long, long time, but
there is actually a person, if not more, in usually when the snow storm starts.
Correia: But it seems like there might, there could be one, a recommendation for moving forward
is having a, for there to be a more formal protocol at the Police Department for
storms that hit
Hayek: Surprisingly.
Correia: --surprisingly, you know, what should they be looking for, who's responsible for what
so that it's not, oh, a half hour later a call goes in and then get - I mean, I don't
know if that's (inaudible).
Stockman: Usually the first one they'll catch, that the police really catch is the bridge. Bridges'll
get slicker quicker than anything. And a lot of times, the third shift, which is the
night shift, are very high on that, and a lot of them run the bridges, as soon as they
hit a slick spot on the bridge, that's when that number one man's called in.
Correia: Right. And then I had another question that, um Mr. Butler brought up, um seeing
snow plows driving through streets with, with their blades up when it seems like,
I, you know, I don't operate a snow plow, but I wonder why their blades aren't
down. Is that because they're, they are passing through neighborhoods on their
way to get equipment, it's not their route, why, why would, or what would be the
reason for something---
Stockman: A lot of it is if they are going from one rout to another
Correia: OK.
Stockman: ---if the truck that was in that route had just put down material---
Correia: OK.
Stockman: ---and here comes this next truck, and he drops his plow, all he done was just----
Correia: Then the material's gone.
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Stockman: ---eliminated all of the equipment, I mean all of the product we just put down on the
street.
Correia: OK. OK.
Stockman: So, the majority time that's more or less why that truck might have its plow up.
Correia: So they, they've just put product down they don't want to plow it off?
Stockman: It could have been, yeah, there could a been a truck just ahead of him that was in that
route with the plow that put the material down. But if it's deep, uh, majority time
then that plow is on the street.
Correia: OK.
Hayek: That I think, Rick also mentioned, that downtown you might see blades up because the
alternative is to plow a huge berm in front of parked cars. Uh, which means we
probably need to talk about what we do with cars parked downtown with the snow
ordinance---
Bailey: Right, if we had a snow ordinance-
Stockman: And this year, in the heavy snows we did try something new, we plowed windrows to
the center. We did take and plow, uh, say like we used three or four parking
spots-
Hayek: Yeah.
Stockman: ---we would actually just push the snow into a pile, just to get it off the street. We did
do that. It was successful, so I think we'll probably see more of that in the future
if we get a heavy snow, you know during the day or evening. That will probably
take care of some of the problems we've had downtown.
Wright: I did hear a lot of positive comments about the windrows in particular, how much more
quickly it seemed the streets were cleared by using those.
Stockman: And, and a person get around a lot better.
Bailey: OK, other comments from the public?
Stockman: Thank you.
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Bailey: Thank you.
(Pause)
Bailey: Kind of surprised.
Wright: Uh, one, one thing-
Hayek: We may have more public comment.
Bailey: I think we have some more.
Correia: That's OK.
Max Hilton: My name is Max Hilton, I uh used to live at 701 Eastmoor Drive in Iowa City. Um,
this is just a comment in regard to the towing policy. Um, if you refer to the
handout you have a uh procedure here for the sidewalk, informing resident or uh
owners of homes in regards to the clearing of the sidewalk, which is a letter sent
via regular mail, it's not certified or anything and then a note attached to the door.
Um, I had the kind of unfortunate experience of learning about a 48 hour parking
ordinance which I guess has been on the books for a long time here, um, but
doesn't appear to be routinely enforced, maybe through the warmer months when
it maybe harder to facilitate or understand whether a car's been parked for 48
hours or not. But I work out of town. I've owned that house for about two years.
I've been doing work on there, I do construction work, and I had a uh a
construction trailer parked on and off there through the course of eighteen months
- longer than 48 hours. And I quite honestly admit that, because I wasn't aware
that it was one, illegal to park a trailer for more than 48 hours and or a car. But
uh, when I was away in Illinois working at one point, someone initiated a call, a
citizen I guess, and a public service officer came by and attached the uh sticker to
the trailer. That was the notification that I received. I didn't get a letter in the
mail prior to towing. I didn't get a certified letter. I didn't get anything. I got
this attached. The vehicle was subsequently towed. It cost me $250 to get my
trailer back which was parked in front of my own house. I'd like to see
something more follow the line of the sidewalk information before you start
towing vehicles. If they're in anon-emergent situation, this was down in
Mosquito Flats, and I'm not sure if you guys all know where that's at. It was
knee deep in snow. They didn't plow the street after they towed my vehicle for a
week or better. I just think that the courtesy might have been, send me a letter.
Tell me that the vehicle's parked illegally. The driveway was vacant when I left.
When I came back, I got my impounded vehicle. I paid my $250. I drove it
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straight back to my own house. I backed it into my own driveway. So that's,
that's just a procedural thing I think that should be addressed, with this being the
only notification before you tow somebody's vehicle. I think that's fairly
inadequate. Uh, you know, a $10 parking ticket turned into $250. So, that, I
don't know who administers that.
[Jh then, I just really want to comment on what's going on. This gentleman (indicating Rick
Fosse) knows exactly what's going on. I liked exactly what he said. There isn't
anything that most people are going to add to or detract from what this man said.
If you tell him to solve your snow problem, he'll solve your snow problem. Now
if there's political expediency or anything else that might constrain that, that's
outside of his realm. But I can almost guarantee this man can answer any of your
questions and fix any of the problems. You just got to find the political resolve to
do it and the money.
Bailey: Thank you. (To Fosse) Did you pay him?
(Laughter)
Hilton: No, but you should give him a raise.
(More laughter)
Wright: We do tend to keep the, in some parts of town in particular, the 48 hours (inaudible).
Correia: Well, and I wonder, I wonder that -
Bailey: Street storage.
Correia: I wonder of that's something to get information out before the winter season, through
everybody, through water bills or other, I mean, about that 48 hours.
Wright: Or even signs.
Correia: And signs.
(Inaudible)
Hilton: On the way down, I even, I don't, this is somewhat a little sarcastic, but I counted the
number of parking signs on the street: "No Parking 2 -6," "No Parking Here to
Corner," "No Parking" - I never seen a 48 hour parking sign in this town.
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Correia: Right.
Hilton: What's? Is there a? -----
Correia: ---- I don't think we have any.
Hilton: ---- Are they expensive? Or, you know, I, and see now, that's where I get a little cheeky.
Correia: --We have some issues about signs proliferation---
Hilton:-- But there's a million parking signs, and fire hydrants are painted red, the curbs are
painted yellow, we've got all these things but we can't seem to facilitate that, so.
Thanks.
Bailey: Thank you. Other comments?
Craig Gustaven: I've been sitting back in the corner trying to decide whether to speak or not.
Craig Gustaven of the Downtown Association. Uh, we had a meeting with uh,
almost everybody here earlier this year, and a very productive meeting also,
because we did see a lot of changes in the downtown area. It was nice to hear
somebody say, uh, Mr. Butler, that it feels like the downtown does need to take a
little more priority. We agree with him. Uh, when you think about the number of
people who work downtown, the University of Iowa, people who live downtown,
we have probably one of the highest concentration of people in Iowa City in a
very small area. And it gets a little frustrating sometimes. Not only as a business
owner, but as somebody who works, and eats, and lives downtown, how difficult
it can be getting across some of the streets, and then we do have a number of
people that are confines to a wheelchair that found it very difficult to get around
the downtown, particularly the intersections, which, Rick addressed. Uh, I really
want to commend Rick and his staff because once they listened to us, and heard
our concerns, they addressed them. And conversely, we had no idea some of the
problems that they had, one of was what, again, why didn't you put the snow
plows down when you go through the downtown area? And once we learned
why, it made perfect sense to us why they don't put them down so that people
don't get trapped into a parking space. The um, couple things we, and I think
they're, they're working on this, and we really appreciate it, is, um, yeah, the n
street parking, one of our biggest complaints is once they put the ice down and the
snow starts to melt, if you look at the streets they're actually curved. So
everything drains to the curbs. And one of the problems we have is after the slush
builds up and cars start going through, the slush keeps going more and more to the
curbs and so all of a sudden our on street parking is almost impossible to park.
We've seen cars parked as far out as three or four feet away from the curb,
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because that's the only place they could park to get out of their cars. And that's
one of the reasons, uh, we need more snow removal downtown and, and again,
when they started to windrow down the middle of the street that helped a lot. So
hopefully we'll see that continue on. And again, taking the snow maybe piling it
to one side of the street on Washington Street. Those are all, we felt very
effective ways of handling some of our snow removal. The crosswalks are always
a problem. You know, most of the store owners are fairly good about clearing the
snow from, most of us go to the curb, on some of the wider streets when you have
a, uh, we have some of the planters, they take it out to there, uh. We actually sent
out a memo to a lot of the store owners saying don't pile the snow up on the bike
racks. You know, people do use them. Some, uh, some places, it was the only
place they had to put snow. I know some of them did remove them. I think they
City came and removed some of the snow around them also. So, uh, but that, as
far as the Downtown Association goes, we're trying to educate our merchants
about their responsibilities are, and just as a store owner, it's to our benefit to
keep as much snow, uh, removed as we can. But we are working on that also.
The, I think one of the biggest things we can do is to look at our snow emergency
routes and institute something. One of the problems that rick, that we realize we
have is, uh, you even get one car, like, Sunday morning I would come down to
our store and clear off our sidewalk. Even though we're not open on Sunday, we
try to keep the snow removed so that we're not battling all day Monday. And so
many times I'd see, you know, everything on Clinton Street from Washington
down to Iowa Avenue is cleared except for one car in the middle of the block.
And it screws everything up because they got to go around that, and then you
can't make a clean sweep of it. So it would be nice if they had a mechanism, you
know, if we had a snow emergency route, to say, OK, you have to be off the street
by 10 or 11 or 12 o'clock, whatever time you would choose so that we have a
mechanism to get those cars out of the way so we can keep the downtown clean.
And again, I think we all agree when I, it was such a, such an unusual year. It's
like, one thing on top of another. And I think under the circumstances, I really
want to congratulate or commend Rick and his staff, and everybody at the City
that listened to our concerns, and for trying to address it the best they can.
Hopefully, we won't have another one like that for a long time, but, we from the
Downtown Association, all the merchants downtown, we really appreciate all the
efforts, that you've listened to us. I think maybe a part of this came about because
of some of the concerns you had about the downtown and just with our
community in general. So, again, we really appreciate all your, your input and
wanting to listen to all of us. Thanks.
Bailey: Thanks.
Wilburn: I have a, child responsibilities this evening, so, thanks everybody for coming down.
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I'll look at the transcripts and we are taping, so I'll take a look at the tape to hear
the other comments, so. I presume we'll have another work session closer to the
Bailey: I don't think we're going to solve this tonight.
Wilburn: Yeah. OK. Thanks everybody. (Leaves)
Bailey: Other comments from the public? Um, .you need to come to the mike.
Butler: Uh, my question was concerning the uh twelve on twelve off on the uh driver's
assignments to work the snow program, so to speak. What I'd like to know of
whoever can answer it, when is the snow program officially over? Is it when the
streets are clear? Or when guys have run out of hours? Because I've seen where
the trucks are gone and the snow is still on the streets. I'm talking about the main
streets, so when is the program officially over? Is it when the streets are clean or
when we're out of hours? I just wanted to address that, and that's it. Thank you.
Bailey: Who would like to take that? Rick?
Fosse: Well, with the twelve on twelve off, we can run 24 hours a day. And, uh, I'm trying to
think of the longest stretch we did that this winter. Whether it was seven days in a
row? I think it was, seven days in a row, from, where we worked 24 hours a day.
iJh, that really wears the people out, but, if need be, they might continue longer
than that.
Bailey: OK. Any questions or comments from the public? Lori, did you want to comment?
Lori (Bears): My name is Lori. I'm a little nervous here, but, um, I've lived in Iowa City all my
life and I do agree that we had a different kind of snow removal. Uh, as a
disabled person, I have a hard time walking, uh, during the snow and ice. And I
have to get, uh, to the bus stops, um, at an extra time so they don't miss me, um,
and um. I was also going to ask could there be a collaboration with the University
of Iowa? Um, I don't know who you would talk to at the University and, um, the
snow emergency policy, Coralville, North Liberty, Cedar Rapids, um, have a
snow emergency policy. And, um, and I understand that Iowa City doesn't have
snow removal policy unless the manager feels fit to, um, and I know that the snow
that was in February, that was very extraordinary snow. Uh, I felt they should
have declared a snow emergency, just a couple comments I wanted to make, so.
Bailey: Thanks, Lori. Anybody else wishing to comment? OK, I think we'll close the public
input portion of this. Have a little discussion. As I indicated, I don't think we're
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going to solve this tonight, but let's give some direction to staff, do we need
further information or what would we like, how would we like to move forward.
Wright: I for one would like to see us look hard at some sort of a snow emergency policy. We
all saw the streets get narrower and narrower and narrower because of the parked
cars over the course of the winter. And, uh, even in less bad years, that gets to be
an issue, and this year it got to be pretty nasty by the end of the winter.
Bailey: Are others interested in exploring a snow emergency ordinance or policy? OK.
Correia: I am.
Bailey: I think that we should look at what we have on the books, and then what's around in
other communities, then move forward on that, with the proviso that education is
going to be critical--
Correia: Mmm-hm.
Bailey: --If we do something like that.
Correia: Yep.
Wright: You know, one community, it's certainly a larger town to be (inaudible), Minneapolis's
university of Minnesota, faces a similar situation to Iowa's in which there's very
little off-campus housing. A lot of the students live off-campus, scads of on-street
parking, and, uh, they did have a snow removal policy that worked very well.
Correia: I kind of wonder about Madison, as well. That's probably similar.
Wright: That would be another we might want to look into.
Correia: Yeah.
Bailey: That's a good idea.
Hayek: We've got to get cars off the street downtown.
Several: Yeah, yeah.
Hayek: We just have to do that.
Bailey: And I talked to Joe and Chris and we did have some ramp capacity in the evening, so if it
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were enacted after business hours, we do have some capacity and so we could, we
could talk about using some of our facilities to, to move towards that and that
might be an approach that we could use. Anything else we would like to look at.
Correia: Well, um I'm interested in, um, so you said we're moving for next season to twelve
routes and twelve plows. Well, so I'm just wondering if that's a standard amount
for cities of our size, or are there standards for number of routes, number of
plows, or square miles or lane miles or whatever?
Fosse: Yes, it's the lane mile standard that we'll need to look at.
Correia: Yeah, so.
Fosse: Yeah, that would be an interesting thing to track down.
Correia: Yeah, I'm interested in looking at that to see if maybe we need more plows and more
routes.
Bailey: It makes me nervous to think about using more resources, but I, I mean, there are
standards in every field and if there are standards out there that we can look at,
that might be helpful for us.
Correia: Yes.
Wright: Yeah, that would be interesting information, yes.
Hayek: I'd also like us to consider whether downtown needs a, a higher priority level.
Several: Me too. Yeah. Definitely.
O'Donnell: What do, when do the cars have to be off the street downtown?
Bailey: 2 a.m.
O'Donnell: You know it's really frustrating when you're driving down the street and you, you
see the road cleared and then there's a car there that is completely covered with
snow and it seems like they're there and it never gets completed. So do, do we
tow them out of the way?
Bailey: And then we run into some of the issues that we also heard tonight.
O'Donnell: Well, but this, in a snow emergency, I think 2 o'clock has to be maintained.
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Fosse: Initially, that 24 -excuse me, that 48 hour that, the fellow talked about kicks in and then,
then they are towed out of there. And we also keep end-loaders available so that
when the cars are moved we can dispatch them and go out and plow that area.
Because that's something that's really a priority to folks. And it's usually the
neighbors that call, saying so-and-so moved their car, can you help, can you come
out and plow this, and we do that.
Bailey: One of the tings, when we're talking about downtown, if we do a snow emergency
ordinance is um, coordinating, we would want the cars to be off the street
downtown, so working with the BTA to see what would work, and it might be
earlier than that 2 a.m., and it might be earlier than that 2 a.m., and I think that we
need to talk about that. So yeah, I'm interested in talking about moving
downtown as a priority.
O'Donnell: Me too.
Wright: Me too.
Hayek: In, in connection with that, I think we have a gap on the issue of storefront owners and
their responsibility to shovel ten feet out from their storefront. Maybe we ought
to consider requiring them to do that all the way to a curb or a planter or
something like that. (Inaudible assent from others.) And that's great, that's great
for merchants, I mean you can't have, you can, you can shovel ten feet from your
storefront and if there's a berm or a windrow -is that what you guys call then?---
between you and the, between that point and the curb you defeat the purpose.
Bailey: Absolutely.
Wright: You also see a number of stores, probably the majority do shovel all the way out to the
alley. It's easier.
Bailey: Yes.
Wright: But others don't and suddenly you've got a block of ice.
Correia: Right.
Bailey: We have some variety on the ten foot approach downtown, I would say, quite a bit.
Hayek: Yeah but, but there has to be collaboration and I think people who own or rent downtown
if we can make them responsible for ten feet I think we can ask them to ---
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Bailey: I agree.
Hayek: --do an extra five. It's in their own best interest.
Bailey: We can't take this on ourselves, just ourselves. I think you guys know that. Anything
Correia: But I think the City should clear the bike racks in the Central Business District, or we
need-
Bailey: I think we can talk about how that happens---
Correia: ---or we need to provide more covered bike parking. Maybe that's what we should do
with the matter. I don't know.
Hayek: I think if you have a bike rack in front of your business you should clear it. It doesn't,
the time it takes, we have one in front of our store, our office front, and it takes a
little more time to go around the, the metal, the iron, but, you get it done. I mean
you incent somebody to then park in front of your business.
Bailey: Right. Anything else that we would like to add to this future discussion of what we're
going to look at for snow removal?
Wright: One thing - I'm sorry-
O'Donnell: Go ahead.
Wright: Um, over the course of the winter, I'm sure nobody else got phone calls from, from
people who, who would (inaudible), but I did get a few, uh, and several
comments, um, served as a, how do you tell what's a priority street and what's
not. Many people seem to think that their street must be a priority because
Correia: Well, they live there.
Wright: --because they live on it, I'm. IJh, I, I don't think it's clear to folks in the community
what, what priority streets are. And everyone probably knows Burlington's going
to be a priority, but, uh, what about Bloomington for example?
Bailey: Well maybe, maybe once again we have some public education ahead of us. Is that what
you're suggesting or .. .
Wright: Public education, uh, this would certainly be a longer term project, some streets actually
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color-code their street signs to coincide with their snow, their snow removal
status.
Bailey: Hmm.
Hayek: I, I think looking too closely at the priority issue is dangerous. Sort of like with City
Steps where everything's a high priority, you can only have so many high priority
streets before .. .
Wright: We know there really aren't, the number of high priority streets (inaudible), I suspect.
Hayek: I think we should also, maybe take a look at our notification process.
(Several agreeing)
Bailey: I think we're going to have to if we do a snow emergency ordinance. We're going to
have to be really clear about what we do for notification, and what's, what's
actually feasible for us to do for notification.
O'Donnell: And I think that anybody that cleared their driveway this year clearly understands
what it's like when you're scraping three inches of ice off your driveway. It, it's
incredibly difficult, no matter how much salt and sand you put on it. And I too
have the street plow go by and fill up the end of my driveway, and then they go
down and do - I got many calls on that but that snow has to go somewhere. It
was a very, very unusual year for snow and ice. We had two rainstorms, or three
in February. And it's, it's, it's incredible to try and scrape that off. And it takes
time to get it done and get it done well. But, um, I think overall a great job was
done this year. I mean, considering the circumstances, so. Good job, guys.
Bailey: OK.
Hayek: I'm a little surprised no one from the public addressed us on their personal experience
with snow removal on sidewalks in front of their homes. Um, do we, do we want
to talk about that at all? I, uh, I think it's a good policy, but there were a lot of
complaints about it and people---
Bailey: I think it's agood---
Hayek: --felt it was unfair.
Bailey: I think it's a good policy-
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Wright: It's a good policy.
Bailey: --I think it's fair as a person who's out there, on those walks, um, well, actually I mostly
used your streets, thank you, um, it, its, it gets pretty dangerous and some people
are getting down to the sidewalk and some people aren't. So, I mean we can
certainly talk about it. I think once again it's a communications issue, about what
is the policy, just a reminder, and if you leave town, you probably should find
someone to take care of your walks.
Wright: I do wonder if there's, if there's any organized assistance for folks who have trouble
maintaining their own walks?
Bailey: Maybe that's, could we get that?
O'Donnell: Very curious.
Wright: They do have a-
Bailey: Amy do you know if there are any programs?
Correia: Well, I mean, Elder Services has a chore program, for older adults.
Bailey: OK. So that would be one.
Wright: Elder Services can be of assistance to others.
Bailey: Alright, so we're going to look at a snow emergency ordinance, see what that entails and
then we're going to talk about making downtown more of a priority, and what that
entails. Anything else? I think that nicely fills the plate.
Hayek: Staff, do you have something that you would like
Bailey: Would you like us to be looking at something?
Hayek: --that we haven't already mentioned?
Fosse: We've heard from our plow drivers for years that they'd really like a snow emergency
ordinance that's functional and in place, so I think this will make them very
happy. Moving in that direction.
Bailey: Great.
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Helling: Rick and I had some conversations about that, and there were times when we would
have loved to have invoked that, but since we haven't used it for so long without
any publicity, I think it would have been a disaster to do it, even though we had it
on the books.
Bailey: Right. (Inaudible)
Helling: And that was why we didn't do it.
Wright: Part of the downtown, uh, priority (inaudible) ten foot wide?
Bailey: Yeah. I have that on the list. Um there was something mentioned about ramps and
making sure there was parking available in ramps. Is there anything that Parking,
I mean that we could be looking at regarding that? Um, OK. Alright.
Hayek: I, I think, uh, every time I see a presentation like that I learn more and more about what
the City does-
Bailey: Yeah.
Wright: Yeah, it's amazing.
Bailey: You ought to feel proud.
Hayek: I'm amazed at the way we mobilize and the resources we apply to the problem, and uh,
and that's commendable, and that's why you did the presentation. It's, it's
informative for both the public, but also for us.
Bailey: Yeah. I want to thank all the staff who are here tonight. Thank you very much for
spending an evening with us and thank you for the work that you did in the
winter. I think we all express our appreciation for that. We appreciate it and
we're glad that its spring. It seem spring is going to stay around for awhile. So,
ok, that's um
Helling: Could I echo what you just said? Because I learned a lot more this year about how it's
done. And I, I have to echo that appreciation. There's a lot of people doing a lot
of hard work.
Bailey: Yeah.
Helling: And, uh, I know we make mistakes and I know there's things we can do better, but I
don't want to take away from the effort that's put out. Give my appreciation to
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the staff for those same reasons.
Hayek: Good job.
Bailey: Yeah, really nice job.
Wright: You did some choreography with big equipment.
Bailey: Well, and on-going problem solving, that's the thing that always impresses me, is that we
don't just stick to what we do. As things shift around, you know, you guys are
addressing it. That's good. We appreciate it. Alright, shall we uh? We're not
going to see each other for awhile, so .. .
Hayek: It's our seventh meeting in seven days, so.. .
Bailey: Yes, so. Thank you all for being here. Uh, have a good evening.
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