Mayors Learn The Politics Of Snow Removal

The New York Times:

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, whose city has been overwhelmed by record snowfall, knows the clock is ticking. While residents have been relatively understanding -- so far -- about delays in plowing roads and clearing sidewalks, he recognizes the perils for politicians who do not get their cities cleaned up quickly.

"Snow will test people's patience," the mayor, who faces a tough re-election fight in November, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "A government official who's in tune with his residents knows that you've got to move fast."

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[MochasMom]

10:59 AM on 02/12/2010

Snow removal budget, Washington DC: $6.1 million
Snow removal budget, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: $21 million

And we still can't get our streets plowed.

[ThirdSection]

01:13 AM on 02/12/2010

How's this for a story of a city council that's soon to be replaced? I live in a small town in the mountains of Colorado, and the heavens have opened up this winter and have taken some epic record breaking dumps upon us (and like any decent Coloradan, I've been loving all that glorious powder). Anyway, back in August, among the usual signs of an unusually heavy winter (early frosts, early bear migrations­, etc.), our city council voted to cut the snow removal budget, and I suppose you all can guess how well this will turn out for them come the elections this year...

[chicagurl]

07:46 PM on 02/11/2010

Add Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to the list of mayors who lost their jobs over snow. In December of 2008, Seattle was paralyzed for weeks and nothing was done to get the snow removed - except, of course, in the area where the Mayor lived. Live and learn, get that snow cleared - or get unemployme­nt.

[springsm]

12:04 PM on 02/12/2010

Wow you did elaborate on that story. For one thing, the last time Seattle had snow for "weeks" was in 1969. Secondly, the person who was new running the snow transporta­tion problem had Nickels road plowed by himself, And mostly, the people who are so darned spoiled and citified that they couldn't buckle down, but cried and cried over not being able to go to work the first couple of days were the ones who were the loudest whiners. Actually the behavior in Seattle was juvenile. Granted it was an inconvenie­nce and undoubtedl­y dangerous to those who were housebound­, but snow melts. Hence, the two candidates that beat Nickels didn't have a clue about running a large city and now Seattle has a mayor without experience and without the nation wide good reputation­. Nice guy, but....The snow last year was nothing like what is going on in the rest of this country. But be assured, that the next snow flake near Seattle will bring sand, salt, plows, street spray, media 24/7, etc. The only people who really need help in all of this are the emergency units.

[chicagurl]

08:37 PM on 02/13/2010

The snow in December 2008 started accumulati­ng around the 13th, kept going until about the 27th, 28th of December. That counts as "weeks" in my book. If that's only a couple of days for you, so be it. Metro couldn't run and it was a mess, very few snowplows in the city, it was a disaster. The folks in Seattle did vote in someone who has little experience­, we'll see how it goes, as well as how it goes for the next big snowfall. While SEEC cleared Mayor Nickels, etc. of any wrongdoing in having his road cleared, some employees did note that they had been asked to make sure the roads were cleared for high ranking city officials. As there was insufficie­nt evidence, there simply wasn't enough evidence to charge anyone.

[ZenFUel]

01:20 PM on 02/11/2010

I'm curious to see how many republican­s are quick to call this a government takeover of the neighborho­ods thru snow plowing

This is the same socialism government beck is screaming about isn't it ? Why should my tax dollars go to plow ur street or his or her street ?

I'm mean since we r being looney tunes these days

[TruthLives]

12:11 PM on 02/11/2010

The problem with NYC is that downtown and midtown Manhattan show hardly a trace of snow but the rest of the city is buried in the stuff.. You would think it never snowed if you were in Manhattan.­. They truck the snow out and dump it..

[changing]

12:06 PM on 02/11/2010

I live in affluent Montgomery County next to DC. All the area is coping with this historical event. What do you expect? This is the snowest year ever recorded. We certainly don't need to budget millions of dollars out of our scraped budgets so we will be ready for a once in a lifetime snowfall. It will take time to cope as it does with hurricanes and all kinds of disasters. What is supposed to happen? Snap our fingers and the snow goes away-Chris Matthews was absurd last night wanting the federal government open on Monday when he was safely driven in an SUV to his cushy job. Safety first, let's don't endanger people who work to satisfy our entitled press folks. Everyone else is entitled to have time to recover from a natural disaster but us.

I am now going to shovel my sidewalk and yes the plows are hard at work right now on the street in front of me.

[littlebrowngirl]

01:37 PM on 02/11/2010

I am a Chicago native who now lives in "affluent Montgomery County".

Knowing how well snow is removed in my native Chicago and seeing how understaff­ed and under prepared the DC area is for such snow is hard to watch.

I drove down to my office in DC a few days after the 1st big storm and was PISSED at the conditions of the streets. Although the major streets had been somewhat plowed I thought the overall conditions for motorists and pedestrian­s were unsafe.

People were walking in the street because businesses had not cleared sidewalks, Cars were getting stuck and damaged on major roads because they had not been suffcientl­y cleared of snow. It was a disgrace and very dangerous.

Don't play politics with the snow. Do your best and be honest with the public about what they can expect when they leave home. I would much rather be told to stay off the roads rather than being told all things are fine when they are not.

One note about Chicago and snow removal. I am told in the late 1960s there was a major snow storm that people felt the mayor had not responded well to and he was swiftly voted out of office. After that storm Chicago spares no expense on snow removal. The economic impact of lost productivi­ty to businesses and government is too great. The DC area will learn from their mistakes and hopefully be better prepared the next time.

[trinity]

03:31 PM on 02/11/2010

Well I am a former P.G. and Charles Country native who now lives in the Chicago area....DC Metro area has always had it''s problem with snow. They usually do not get that much of it, so they do not the heavy artillery that Chicago and it's burbs have. Growing up, we used to joke that Southern Maryland's snow removal service was Farmer Brown's tractor with a snowplow attached.

I remember when I was a kid in Maryland, a couple of inches of snow would close schools. You would be lucky if a couple of feet closed Chicago area schools. Back in the mid 80s, DC got about 5-6 inches of snow and the city shut down. Mayor Marian Barry was in Florida at the time. To say the least, he got a ton of flack for that. But Chicago and DC are completely different, DC gets snow, but not a lot. Their winters also don't go into April like Chicago sometimes does.

You are right, no one should be playng politics. This was indeed a freak of nature for the Mid-Atlant­ic states. I think everyone is just doing the best they can.

[-swift]

12:01 PM on 02/11/2010

How come my federal tax dollars pay every time someone in Florida gets their trailer knocked over by a hurricane, but major snowstorms get nothing? This is part of the reason why most of my federal tax dollars go out of my state.

[littlebrowngirl]

01:39 PM on 02/11/2010

I agree this is a natural disaster.

[lemealone]

04:30 PM on 02/11/2010

and nature will make it go away, soon enough.

[sector1463]

09:42 PM on 02/11/2010

Maryland, DC and Virginia are getting money to help with this. They have to apply twice for both storms. It just takes a few to get the funds. They need to wait until the government reopens.

[ChiGuy]

11:35 AM on 02/11/2010

Michael Bilandic/C­hicago/197­9.
The lesson that all mayors should learn

http://en.­wikipedia.­org/wiki/C­hicago_Bli­zzard_of_1­979

[littlebrowngirl]

01:43 PM on 02/11/2010

Agreed. My parents talk about the Chicago 1979 storm as if it happened yesterday. I hope Mayor Fenty is looking at this.

[davidwayneosedach]

11:33 AM on 02/11/2010

A lot of the blizzard snow removal costs will come directly out of the road repair funds. Look for maintenanc­e to deteriorat­e by this summer.

[rainbowblue]

12:00 PM on 02/11/2010

The problem with that will be the potholes and street cracks that will start to appear after all this. Snow is h#ll on roads...

[dianhow]

11:32 AM on 02/11/2010

D C gets snow Poor babies get 1 week off Are they in 5 th grade or what ?
Our public servants are not servants We serve them Great wages- perks- huge pensions - expense accounts Who are they kidding We are peasants- we serve them Its been that way form Reagan on 1980 2008 Bush - Reagan doubled the debt- passed deregulati­on that grew into a meltdown-
W left 1.4 trillion deficit- 2 long wars - lied us into Iraq while Pres Clinton left 30 billion surplus- millions of new jobs So who caused this disaster again ???

[basta]

11:32 AM on 02/11/2010

Snow? What the hell is that? (from Southern Cal)

[ChiGuy]

11:37 AM on 02/11/2010

LOL!
Yeah....Yo­u're the guys that stock up on batteries and drinking water when a thundersto­rm hits, or the temp gets below 50.

;-D

[DinkSinger]

12:15 PM on 02/11/2010

It's that white stuff that closes the I-5 about ten times each winter. Just another Southern California natural disaster, like wild fires, floods, mud slides, and earthquake­s.

[Slimey Republican]

11:29 AM on 02/11/2010

Well, if your a Mayor in any town that gets snowfall, you better make sure your township is always ready for a blizzard.

[whyworry]

11:37 AM on 02/11/2010

DC rarely gets snow...the­y just got a "new" mayor. Unfortunat­ely the mayor inherited a city that never had the resources to deal with this emergency. Lets also be mindful of the fact that any efforts to clean up the snow would have been to no avail because they (DC) got walloped again.

Let's just keep this realistic.­..

[blastit]

11:29 AM on 02/11/2010

WOW is this the best they could do, I'm so not impressed , Tax cuts really its not even orginal or creative its just plain patheic.

[ChiGuy]

11:22 AM on 02/11/2010

See my comment above about Chicago.

Weather is color blind. It doesn't care who's in charge.
If a mayor doesn't have their people ready to go, they deserve to pay the political price.

[ChiGuy]

11:24 AM on 02/11/2010

Oops.

redd35...t­his was intended for you.

[whyworry]

11:18 AM on 02/11/2010

Snow politics?? What a scream! DC never gets this amount of snow. I guess pundits will say that the mayor should have prepared for this event! lol!! Sadly...th­e city's coffers are empty.

Bloomberg is shameful. He has no excuse. NYC has the equipment and a million dollar claim to use it is a lie. He should be ashamed of himself...­but he isn't. He has already won his re-electio­n.

[bannorhill]

07:10 PM on 02/12/2010

Snow Politics.

Al Gore has been doing it for years.

[whyworry]

08:31 PM on 02/12/2010

Well, well, well...I'm assuming that you didn't read the article because this response is lame.