nothin With Summer Coming, City Gears Up For Snow | New Haven Independent

With Summer Coming, City Gears Up For Snow

Paul Bass Photo

Coming to residential avenues: a second “Snogo.”

Encourage neighbors to grab shovels to help an elderly Quinnipiac Avenue neighbor avoid a fine. Send a mega-snowblower to hit neighborhood streets, not just downtown. And have people move their cars first to the even side of the street — then maybe the odd.

As temperatures hit 80 degrees, city officials honed these and other plans to do a better job clearing New Haven streets of snow.

For the second year, a Harp administration task force has been meeting biweekly to analyze its snow removal performance this past winter and figure out how to improve next winter.

Officials updated alders on those plans — then fielded a barrage of complaints and questions ranging from the plight of shut-ins to speeding snow plows that re-buried citizen-cleared sidewalks.

We think we did a pretty good job” handling this past winter’s storms, city emergency management chief Rick Fontana (pictured leading a PowerPoint presentation) remarked at the snow-review session, conducted in City Hall at the most recent meeting of the Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy (CS&EP) Committee.

We will get better,” he said.

Better Plows, Communication

The city handled about 50 inches of snow in seven major storms beginning in late January, plus a slew of smaller events,” Fontana said. It also contended with the coldest February on record, which complicated removal operations.

Eleven pieces of new equipment, especially a massive Snogo snowblower, enabled the city to clear streets faster and more thoroughly, he said. (Read about that here and here.) Better communication with the public — through coordination with SeeClickFix and through the Everbridge emergency phone and text/email system — helped inform the public better about storms, as did stepped-up towing on residential streets.

The city’s parking enforcement crews issued 1,553 snow violation tickets to hep plow trucks clear roads and distributed over 3,000 flyers on windshield parked on snow emergency routes, according to transit chief Doug Hausladen (pictured).

Neighbors made more use of public and private lots to keep cars off the streets.

City of New Haven

The Board of Ed also saved money by enlisting a mix of staffers and private contractors, rather than relying solely on contractors, to clear snow.

Officials focused this past winter on improving street clearance and communication with the public. Fontana said they plan this coming winter to focus as well on sidewalks, both those for which the city has responsibility as well as neighborhood sidewalks, which citizens must clear. Officials plan to step up enforcement of the latter code requirement. The city hopes to enlist owners of more private lots — like the Amity Stop & Shop — to allow neighbors to park there during storms.

They also plan to buy a second mega-snowblower to use on neighborhood streets. The one purchased last year was used on major arteries, especially downtown.

Finally, the city will look at moving from an odd-side-only street emergency storm ban to an alternate system, having people move their cars from one side of the street to the other each day so plows can clear entire roads.

Some citizens asked for such a system last winter. More northern cities used to more snow have succeeded with such strategies. New Haven did not succeed when it experimented with the idea in 2010, Fontana said. People were very confused,” making the effort disorganized.

We’re taking a hard look at it” for the coming year, he said. But we don’t want to jump into something.”

Not So Fast

Alders praised officials for stepping up their game, but said the city has lots more room for improvement.

Westville Alder Adam Marchand (pictured) confronted a long list of complaints from his neighborhood, beginning with speeding plow drivers.

I’m concerned they are going too fast. That can imperil property. It can imperil people,” Marchand said. Faster plows also spray snow back on shoveled driveways and into cleared intersections.

Public works chief Jeff Pescosolido agreed. He said some drivers are supposed to travel at least five to 10 miles per hour below the speed limit. But many exceed that, feeling pressure to complete routes. He said the city used to have a GPS system to monitor speeds; that system has broken down. The city is now looking at a new investment that will do a lot more than GPS,” which will help management better discipline speeding drivers, Pescosolido said. In the meantime, he urged citizens to report the numbers and locations of speeding trucks.

Marchand proceeded to press officials about poorly cleared bus shelters and bus stops and about private management companies pushing snow into the street. Hausladen said the city spent $14,000 hiring temporary workers to clear bus stops and crossings, money that ran out after the first big storm; he said he’d like to get more money to hire New Haveners to take care of our city” throughout winter storms.

Meanwhile, parks chief Rebecca Bombero spoke of citizens’ roles in helping their neighbors dig out. She noted the Yeti shoveling brigades that helped seniors and shut-ins in areas like Westville and Dwight.

Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Santana (seated second from right among committee members in the photo) said she never saw those brigades on her side of town. People there could use the citizen help — as well as better snow plowing and towing of parking-ban offenders.

Although downtown was done pretty remarkably” (except for that green stuff” that was laid down on sidewalks and made them even more slippery), Santana remarked, I don’t believe they were done as well as everybody was saying in residential areas.” She spoke of how difficult it was to get to her mother’s house on Quinnipiac Avenue, which she said the city should treat as more of a major snow route. Pescosolido responded that the addition of a second mega-snowblower will produce better results on Quinnipiac.

The city did a great job” on the first storm but then went down a couple of notches” by the second, observed East Rock Alder Anna Festa (pictured). Especially when it came to ticketing and towing — and therefore plowing — on side streets. 

I have an SUV. I was driving some of the narrower streets. I had difficulty driving down them,” Festa said. Meanwhile, I was out chopping ice on my sidewalks because the storm drains were all blocked.”

Officials did not seek an increase in their $518,000 snow-clearance budget for the coming fiscal year, even though they had to find $300,000 in extra money elsewhere in the public works budget to cover last winter’s costs. Chief Administrative Officer Mike Carter said he believes that continued efficiencies will enable the city to stay within the $518,000 — assuming a similar amount of snow falls again.

CS&EP Chair Alder Sal DeCola, who organized the hearing, told officials to return in September to update the committee on how the second set of fixes are coming along.

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