Alder Amy Marx (left): “How do we as a city do a better job…such that we create incentives so the next storm, we don’t have a problem?” The Elicker administration exceeded its snow-clearing budget by $1.2 million when responding to this winter’s once-in-a-decade snowfall. The city also sent out 417 warnings and 110 citations to people who violated policies regarding, for example, shoveling sidewalks and not dumping snow onto the street. Those snow-snow-snow facts emerged during a public workshop Thursday evening about the city’s response to the major winter storms that blanketed the city with a foot of snow in late January and another 20 inches in late February. The meeting was hosted at City Hall by the Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) Committee. Over the course of three hours, alders pressed city officials on how the snow response could have gone better. East Rock Alder Anna Festa and Upper Westville Alder Amy Marx, for example, questioned why the city did not ticket more cars that violated parking bans and blocked snow plows. With bans that begin at noon, “at 12:01 p.m., someone should be checking if people moved their cars,” said Festa. “Because if we aren’t enforcing, we’re enabling.” “How do we as a city do a better job … such that we create incentives so the next storm, we don’t have a problem?” asked Marx. She suggested sticking a ticket on every car that violates the parking ban. “[Parking enforcement] is very slow work,” responded Haley Simpson, the new director of the city’s Department of Transportation, Traffic, Parking. In the few hours before a storm, the city prioritizes towing cars that will block plows or emergency vehicles, rather than spending resources on ticketing. Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Rebecca Bombero estimated that 42 additional people would be needed to ticket every car in violation of the parking ban. “I love ticketing and towing,” said Simpson. “I’ll look into why we can’t ticket the people that violate the ban.” Though, she added, some of them “might have tickets coming in the mail.” On the topic of penalties, Chief Administrative Officer Justin McCarthy said January’s snowstorm resulted in 268 warnings and 32 citations, while February’s blizzard led to 149 warnings and 78 citations. “One of the things we like to do is education. We don’t want to punish,” McCarthy said in an interview with the Independent. “But if people, in back-to-back storms, commit the same acts or omissions, it ties our hands.” Penalties were primarily doled out to contractors that dumped snow into the street or on nearby properties, and to people who failed to shovel the sidewalk in front of their homes. City officials also addressed bus stops, which were blocked by large snow banks, according to regular riders. Staff from the Department of Public Works (DPW) worked with the prison-reentry nonprofit EMERGE to clear snow from stops with high levels of ridership, said McCarthy. Clearing bus stops on private property was largely left to the property owners. Given the city’s limited resources, it was necessary to prioritize high-use stops, said McCarthy. Out of the city’s 900 bus stops, only 120 serve more than 20 riders per day. (While the state runs the city’s bus network, it is not responsible for clearing snow from bus stops; instead, that burden falls on the city and adjacent property owners.) Even with their best efforts to be fiscally responsible, DPW and other departments still spent $1.2 million over budget on overtime, salt, sand, weather monitoring, and snow-clearing contractors, said McCarthy. Some of the expense was caused by the two-week cold snap following the first storm on Jan. 25, said McCarthy. The cold created “rock-hard ice,” which is difficult to clear, instead of the usual slush that follows snowstorms. By the time the second storm hit, it blanketed the leftover sheets of ice and piles of snow, requiring “hundreds of truckloads” of snow removal. The Board of Education’s storm response costs were not part of McCarthy’s $1.2 million over-budget figure. According to Chief of School Operations Paul Whyte, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) also exceeded their snow budget. One factor contributing to NHPS’ excess spending might have been ineffective contractors, an issue that East Rock/Fair Haven Alder Caroline Tanbee-Smith raised. On Thursday, she asked Whyte for the percentage of underperforming contractors. He said that around 10 to 15 percent fell short of expectations. A similar proportion required city staff to clear entrances and curb cuts before school could reopen. Moving forward, he said the city would point out dropoff and pickup spots to contractors. More broadly, added Whyte, they “need to do a little more work” on pulling together ways to improve the process of contracting snow removal services. A crowded table in the Aldermanic Chamber discusses storm management. The post Snowstorm Debrief: $1.2M Over Budget; No-Show Shovelers Warned, Cited appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less