Public Utilities and Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the sustainability and infrastructure committee meeting for March 18. I'm the chair, councilor Jesse Klingen. And before we get started, I'm just gonna read this blurb that allows us to do this meeting remotely. Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025, this meeting, of a city council committee will be conducted via remote participation.

We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the city of San Diego website and local cable access government channels. With that little piece of, work out of the way, why don't we go ahead and call, do a roll call to establish a quorum? Clerk votes here.

Roll call to establish quorum. Councilor Scott, councilor Hart Here. Chair Klingen Present. With two present and one absent, you have a quorum.

Okay. So, councilor Scott has a a conflict. He will be arriving at some point, but he has another meeting that he had to attend, a board related meeting. That said, I just so let's first get this housekeeping out of the way, item number one, which is the approval of the minutes from the February 9, s and I meeting. If you could call the roll on that.

Absolutely. Councilor Scott? Councilor Hart?

Yes.

Chair Klingen? Yes. With two yes and one absent, these minutes are accepted.

Alright. Great. So and then some more housekeeping. So I'm gonna jump right to item number five, which is was a public communication sent by, Christopher Beland submitting comments. I haven't spoken to him. And quite frankly, I wasn't, totally sure as far as what the disposition of those were. So I'm just gonna keep that one in committee. I did talk to Jackie Duffy. She had missed that meeting. So we really I need to do a little more legwork as to as to figure out what exactly is going on.

There is a email communication from the from the resident, Chris Beland, and it's related to no power at a particular pole near 35 Holland Street. That's been out of service since January 14. So I'm not I'm not not gonna take any action on this. Again, I can't I don't know. Can if anybody can recall, meaning, my colleague, counselor Hart or, clerk Pottier, these many items listed here, the grant of locations, did we approve those but just still sent this here for follow-up, or were we holding the I mean, it wouldn't seem it would seem like we would we would wanna hold off on those if there was some issue, but we may have that was a kind of a hectic.

We were all kinda I remember there was a lot going on, and and, yeah, I was okay. Do you remember,

Yes. I we did not hold all of those items, like, in that licenses and permits committee, but I believe that there was going to

be action. You know, miss Duffy had said that they would take action on the street the providing power to that streetlight.

Okay.

Okay.

Don't know. I have not received confirmation. I did reach out to mister Biland. He lives in Ward 7, and I have not received confirmation that it has been addressed.

Okay. I so I was no. Thank you for that. Thank you for that reminder. Like I said, I was there's a lot going on, and I didn't quite remember the disposition. So on that, what I'll say is that I literally just called Jackie Duffy. I got I I was able to get her number right before the meeting and call her, who she wasn't able to attend at night. She I'm gonna speak to her first thing tomorrow morning and figure out and go over the email. I'm gonna forward the email to her and and make sure that this has been been settled. So we will just leave this in committee for now.

We'll bring it up next time once it's resolved, but I will, take care of this with her, henceforth. So, clerk mister clerk, we will keep this one in committee. Understood. And then and then the other one, which is item number seven, order two six dash zero three five three by councilor Hart that the commissioner of public works discussed the council with the council, the frequency of street sweeping throughout the period of April through November. I actually accidentally put that on the agenda.

The administration is not quite ready to speak to that. They don't have a a a response a robust response prepared. There was you know, they've been working really hard on all of these snow items. So we'll just take it up at the next meeting. So, yeah, that's is that okay with you, counselor? Like I said, they they I had just kinda I grabbed them all, and then I I heard from the administration that, they weren't quite ready to respond to that one yet.

No problem.

Sounds good. Okay. So item number seven, we will keep in committee, mister Clark. Understand. Bring this to showtime. It's, it's snow time, showtime. So just to set the table, we have, one, two, three. We have about six items related to snow removal. As you know as you all know, folks at home and elsewhere, we were hit with a storm in January, then one just a few weeks or a month later. Just really kind of, two feet of snow in that second storm.

DPW worked their tails off to get the roads clear. Obviously, there's still a lot to be desired in terms of extras such as bus stops, ADA accessible ramps. And this is something that I've been kinda working on around, you know, the the abutters issue, which is technically the abutters are supposed to handle the snow, on the ramps if you abut a ramp. So there's so there's many different issues here, and I'm gonna read them. I'm gonna we're gonna take them all together, and then I'm gonna read them in an abbreviated way just because, you know, this is all online.

Maybe the clerk can yeah. He has it pulled up on the screen. So I'm gonna read it sort of in an abbreviated way just so that we're not not reading six items in a row here, taking up time. And then we're gonna have a presentation by the DPW that will basic by the commissioner, Eric Weissman, that will kind of lay out, like, go over some of these, and then we can do questions on on them. So we'll take them up altogether.

So that will be just for the record, that will be item number items number two, three, four, six, eight, and nine. And, item number two is regarding removing snow from dead end streets, private ways, and alleyways in a timely manner. Item number three is regarding sidewalk snow clearing pilot, the school school street pilot, and whether or not that's worked as intended this year or whether or not there are other strategies to improve pedestrian mobility following a large snowstorm. Item number four is regarding just lessons learned from this really huge recent storm about resources and policies needed to improve snow clearing, including MBTA bus stops, business district sidewalks, and parking, private ways and dead ends, that's come up again, and accessible ramps and bike lanes. Item number six is regarding policy of prohibiting parking on alter alternating sides of the street during a snowstorm and whether it's the best way to meet snow removal.

That was by councilor Hart. And then item number eight, which is, regarding how we do do we ensure that handicap parking spaces are not used for snow storage, and or dumpsters, but that's an ISD matter, storage and are cleared at the same time as other spaces. And then finally, item number nine, which is regarding how we can ensure that accessible sidewalk ramps are cleared following snowstorms and ensure that three one one reports on the issue are promptly responded to. So when someone puts a ticket in about a a a curb cut ADA ramp, you know, making sure that they're they're addressed in a timely manner. So yeah.

So all of those being on the table, I'll will now turn it over to the commissioner of DPW who has provided a provided a presentation. Sort of it's it's kind of a what what's the word I'm looking for? Like, a, after report of the storm in a way and, speaks to some of these issues. So let's get into it. With that, commissioner Weissman, the floor is yours. Thank you, chair. Eric Weissman, I'm commissioner of DPW. Before sorry. But before I turn over to you, are you able to let the commissioner share screen or whoever needs to put

It looks like I have permissions to do that. So if don't you mind, I'll go ahead. Yeah.

If you could just put the slides up so that the the folks at home can kinda follow along.

It looks like it's disabled. Can somebody enable me?

Let me take a look.

It's all green and tempting me to click, but it doesn't work. Try

it now.

K.

I need to try to full screen this. Can you guys see wrong view. Hold on a second.

Yep. Take your time.

If I switch screens. Give me one moment.

I just did this a moment ago. I'll cut this to work. It's a down.

There's one that's, like, switch, which which Yeah.

The chair through you. It might be the display settings at the top.

Yes. That's it. Swap presenter view and slide view. How's that? Perfect. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Yasmin. Alright. Thank you, chair and counselors, for having me. I'm going to make a presentation on the year's snow operations so far.

The agenda is we'll just start with the snow operations one zero one. We'll do a January storm postmortem and then dig into dead ends and private ways, mobility infrastructure, and the enhanced enforcement area, also known as the snow pipe. Mhmm. K. So this is just going over a typical big storm timeline. So we offer

Sorry sorry to interrupt yet again. But I think if I I I kinda like since it's, you know, it's just a few of us here. I kinda like doing questions during during the call.

Jump in?

So I'm gonna just I'll just defer to the raised hand thing. So I'll let you actually well, we'll just just stop, and then I'll I'll call on if counselor has a question. Alright. We'll just kinda play We'll play it like that.

You let me know if a counselor has a question. I'm I'm gonna be in the zone. So

Yeah. Yeah.

Go for I don't call on you, I apologize. I'll try to be looking out. Okay? So 70 so, like, throughout the winter, we're we're reviewing forecasts, and about seventy two hours prior to storm is when forecast really start to solidify. And then the other nice thing about seventy two hours prior to a storm is that's when we can start liquid de ice or pretreatment, otherwise known as brine, assuming that the conditions are right.

So that means sufficiently cold weather, no rain, storm starting with snow, not not rain or ice. We have a flow a whole flowchart to determine whether we can start with with liquid de icer, and the advantage of that is that unlike road salt, it doesn't bounce around, get crushed up, moved off the roads, pushed to the sides. With regular or treated road salt, we'll be doing that treatment closer to the storm either the day before or the day out depending on the conditions and the timing of the storm. Once the storm is underway, we bring in staff and contractors to repeatedly plow routes prioritizing safe passage of emergency vehicles and the schools.

And

then in most in smaller storms, we're doing separated bike facilities at the same time, and then removal operations happen later. And then we're depending on the storm, we may be reapplying de icer or road salt throughout the storm. Then in a larger storm, twelve to twenty four hours after the storm, snow removal operations begin starting with schools, and we'll get into the operational hierarchy of removal in a further slide. And then in following days, we are responding to three one one requests, conducting further snow removal, responding to requests about things like space savers. Okay.

So who does what? This is a common question we get about snow. The city is responsible for city streets, sidewalks, adjacent ramps around city property, around in within the property of schools, squares and islands, city and school lots, bridges. And when we say bridges, we mean the sidewalks and bridges, bus stops and adjacent ramps, and parks and playgrounds, and thus the or the sidewalks around parks and playgrounds. The state is responsible for removing snow from state roads, for us is Route 28, Route 16, so McGrath Highway and Alewife Parkway.

It it the state is also responsible for the McGrath Pedestrian Bridge and sidewalk adjacent to that except where the sidewalk is adjacent to the the Cremins Playground and then also MBTA train stations. Councilor Klingen, Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Well well, one thing I noticed, and this was sort of like a big kind of what's the word? Like, sort of like a big change was the community path. This is the biggest storm we've had since we had the community path, and I noticed that I don't see the community path on there. I guess, is that just adjacent ramp sidewalks and adjacent ramp?

I I guess it's we actually treat the community path as as a city street. We run due to the size of it and the type of equipment we can run on it, we run that throughout the storm. I get, like, a little later into bike infrastructure and, like, mobility infrastructure. But the we've all or since we've taken over the community path, we've always maintained it for snow. We claimed when we first got it that we might have to close the path if it was over four inches because we didn't know. Particularly, we were concerned about the tightness around the viaduct.

Yeah. I mean, that makes sense from you all's point of view of, like, kinda treating it as something that you already like, part as part of your already things. So considering it like a street based on its width, considering it a street, it makes sense. I just want the public to know because that was sort of a big piece of contention. You know? It's

Yeah. So so I I I would say to the public that the more cyclists and pedestrians using the community path, the fewer cyclists and pedestrians that are on the roads. So it it gets a tremendous amount of usage. It's about as close as we could get to a bicycle and pedestrian highway within the city. So that is why we prioritized it.

We'll talk about the prior prioritizing about of the separated bike facilities later on in the presentation. But, yeah, it's just it's like a single truck that runs back and forth down the community path, and we were able to keep it open for all except the the last big storm, the the February storm. And I think that was due to the sort of heavy wet nature of the snow. But yeah.

Makes sense.

Sure. Yeah. Just

wanted to I just wanted to Yeah. Yeah.

But that is a city responsibility. That's part of our agreement with the state when we accepted the the community path. And then so and then finally, property owners are responsible for sidewalks and curb ramps adjacent to their property, including ADA ramps and their own driveways. K. So this is sort of breaking down what's going on during a major storm.

So if it's a snow emergency, our operational team is overseeing towing operations conducted in conjunction with police and parking departments in coordination with communications, public safety, constituent services, and emergency management. Highways and infrastructure are taken care of through the plowing and deicing of city streets and separated bicycle facilities. So when we're talking about separated bicycle facilities, we're talking about the the flex post or otherwise separated bicycle facilities on the road. And then the facilities team is clearing of snow from from schools, city buildings, sidewalks, adjacent to city property, and parking lots, and that includes the community path. And then I wanted to draw attention to to how we how we conceptualize these storms.

We have service levels, and that is mowed like, mostly based on forecasted accumulation. Although there are other considerations like subsequent temperature, ice, existing snow on the ground. Like, we might handle a two inch or sorry. We might handle a four inch storm after a 24 inch storm differently than we handle a four inch storm in isolation. K?

So we're we're salting and or brining weather permitting in most storms throughout the storm. Once you hit about above about eight inches, then we're gonna be backing off on, salting during the storm because you're just gonna be pushing it away. Similarly, we staff up and bring in contractors depending on the amount of snow. So the degree to which we plow on a zero to two inch storm would be different than a two to four inch storm. K?

Ditto pretreatment to what degree we plow separated bike facilities. One of the big changes after that first storm, and this is the first storm that we've this is the first year with significant enough storms where we've had this scale of separated bike facilities. We really found that it was counterproductive to run bicycle equipment at the same time that we were running road plows and at sometimes small equipment on, like, the bridges. If you were to imagine a bridge that has a 10 wheel truck pushing snow in one side and, like, a small tractor clearing a sidewalk, the the bike facilities were sort of stuck in the middle. So we're gonna talk about that a little further later, but we we're switching in a larger storm to a removal operation on those separated bike facilities because it was it just felt like it wasn't effective to be running them throughout the roof.

But up to about eight inches, it is really effective, it gets people onto those facilities and getting to work the next day, which is really our priority, safely getting to work the next day. And then the degree to which we bring in contractors will depend on the amount of snow and how we deploy them within routes, whether we're tandeming them or whether we are splitting routes up. And then finally, we the more snow there is, the more removal operations there are. So in a small storm, we may do no snow removal. In a medium sized storm, we'll do some snow removal.

Maybe we'll just be pushing piles for the schools, but maybe we'll be scooping up piles and storing the snow. Bigger storms, snow removal becomes very likely in order to get a school open, and then the removal sort of expands from there. Counselor Hart.

Thanks so much. I just wanted to ask a quick clarification. I'm not familiar with the term back dragging.

Oh, sure. Yeah.

The chart.

Okay. So that that means that the like, for a small storm, we might have the plow rather than push the snow, like drive up and drag the snow backwards to pull the snow off of the bus route to make it clear for a bus to come. That's really done in a small storm or medium sized storm where we wanna make sure that people have you know, we wouldn't do a full scale operation, but we might clear the snow away from where riders would

be Got it.

Boarding and

Thank you.

Deboarding. Right. So Alright. So

Patricia, when do you need to call in contractors? I I don't mean what situations because I could see it there on the last slide if you could go back. But, like, I just so you must have, like, sort of these three sets of plans because, like, you know, each plow has a roof. And so, like, to be able to do the whole sit even with a with with, like, a two inch storm Yeah. Contractor is not even used. I mean, that's still quite a bit of labor for

Yes. So we have, like I actually should know this off the top of my head. I think we have, like, 27 routes total once you consider the crosstones, the maze, the neighborhood routes. Those you you sort of like, we're we're gonna look at the forecast. We're gonna see our staffing level, who's available to work. It's often just as the nature of these things happening over time. So we go through for the CBA calling our staff in. Our staff gets called in before we call any contractors in. Then in a small storm, we might have to supplement with contractors depending on staff availability. But we might also say, like, okay.

We have 11 people. We're gonna double up the routes. So, you know, it's only gonna fall two inches over twenty four hours. We're just gonna cover this whole storm with a smaller crew, or we're just salt in. You know? And then, like, once it gets bigger, we determine, like, okay. Do we need two trucks on the all these routes? Do we need to have do we need to fill in where there are gaps? So so at that point, that's when we would sort of adjust the contractor plan.

I just wanna acknowledge councilor Scott and councilor Scott. So we're doing the question is giving a presentation. And, obviously, bigger picture questions, I'll wait until the end, but feel free to throw your hand up while he's presenting if if it's, like, you know, a very sort of specific question. So we're just kinda doing it free flow style, freestyle like that. But,

yeah. So welcome. Thank you.

Yep. Okay. So

this is a simple separation of snow removal areas post storm by priority. So schools and city facilities are our highest priority, and that involves clearing and removing from parking lots, drop offs, and adjacent crosswalks. So if even within that category, schools are our highest priority given the calendar. Right? So assuming that the that it's a day where there's school the next day, it's not a vacation period, there isn't, like, significant programming, we might deemphasize school removal.

But in most cases, schools are our number one priority. We wanna get schools open as quickly as possible. Our next bucket is mobility infrastructure. That is clearing all MBTA bus stops and adjacent ramps and then clearing bike and pedestrian facilities as necessary. As I said earlier, under most circumstances, we're keeping the community path open throughout the storm.

I think there was there was one storm where we lost it midway through the storm and then came back and cleared it the next day. In a really catastrophic storm, that might turn into a removal operation, but it hasn't We've been able to, like, clear a wide enough lane, but it's extremely narrow, and there's limits to how much weight can be on the on the viaduct. So that's, like, something we've sort of kept in our back pocket and had and haven't had to use it. In bigger storms, we're gonna be clearing snow from the separated bicycle facilities like we did in the last storm. But in medium and small storms, we're gonna be keeping those clear throughout the storm as well.

And then our next priority is usually reserved for after a snow emergency is lifted, involves removing snow from streets and corners to maintain public safety and city operations and clearing public squares. So we are in communication with the school department, with police and fire to make sure that as cars move from the parking side to the nonparking side after an emergency that there's still clearance. So, like, if there's a street that's narrow, that public safety equipment can't get down or it's not safe like, it's making drop offs unsafe, we'll go in and do some clearance there. And then finally clearing public squares, that that is something that's hap happens in, like, the largest storms usually to just, you know, make those sort of heavily trafficked areas clearer. K?

Alright. So then I wanted to get into the, postmortem, and I just wanted to, quickly give a shout out to our team. So I'm extremely proud of the work our DPW staff and contractors have done so far this winter, especially amid historic snow totals. We are not perfect, and we believe that there is always room for improvement. We welcome feedback, and we love to look for new ways to refine our operations and to better serve our constituents, and that's why we're here.

K? So I want to provide some context for for this this season. We had and these are Summerville numbers, not Boston numbers. So we had 68 inches of snow through through today. I checked the numbers again, and those numbers are still good.

68 inches of snow to date, the highest snowfall total since the 2015. The January storm, we had 23 and a half inches, and in the February storm, we had 16, almost 17 inches. And it's unusual to say that you feel lucky that you only got 17 inches, but when you look at some of our neighbors to the south, I think we did okay in that storm. So biggest storm our biggest season in a long time, biggest storm in a long time. So I wanted to break it down by what I thought was successful.

I thought the staff, the highway buildings, grounds, other people that pitch in with plowing and shoveling did a great job with the first major storm since 2022, and it produced one of the top 10 snowfall totals in Boston history. And that we were able to keep not only road access, but the community path open in spite of nearly two feet of snow. So and then here are the big rooms for improvement. The private ways and dead end snow response fell well below our standards, particularly during the storm, and separated bike facilities were completely snowed in at the end of this at the end of the storm despite running small equipment throughout the storm. So that's an extra stinger that was tough.

And then many routes didn't have snow plowed as close to the curb as we would have liked where possible. Councillor Hart. I don't why the screen is yellow.

Thank you. And through you, chair, to commissioner Wiseman, I just wanted to ask a quick question on that last slide. Mhmm. If you could say more about the because I can imagine that it's really difficult if you have a plow going through and then it's plowing in the direction of the bike lane.

Mhmm.

You know, how is that supposed to work, and then how

Sure.

Did it end up happening? I'd just love to hear more thoughts.

Yeah. What what you'll see in most cases is that there's there's, like, a a windrow that gets developed that they they almost, like like, create a a pile like this, a narrow tall pile that sort of goes along the flex post. And there's usually enough travel, like, space for for motor vehicles to be in their lane and cyclists to be in their lane as well, their separated lane as well. I think we just came up to the volume in this case. There was just too much snow being pushed into the into the bike facilities.

So, you know, we're we're driving around constantly in these storms, and we we saw one really troublesome situation where, like, a pile had gone through and then the equipment on the separated bike facilities was pushing snow back into the road. And we actually had to help a motorist who was getting stuck in just the snow that was getting pushed from the bike facility into the road. Like, that is not how it's supposed to be working. The way it's supposed to be working is that there's, like, a little bit that's gonna go onto the verge of the sidewalk, a little bit that's gonna go in the flex post zone, and then enough clear travel for does that answer your question?

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. So this was supposed to say, like, number three dead ends and private ways. I don't know what happened. But so I wanted to to yeah. I wanted to break down the the dead ends and private ways. So city owned dead ends make up about 2% of our roadway mileage. In general, they're narrower, but they are parked subject to parking restrictions and, like, snow emergencies. But the the challenge with dead ends is there's nowhere to push snow. If you're pushing a linear road, you kinda just keep pushing along, and it gets dragged to the side of the road. With a dead end, that's not really possible.

Then moving on to private ways. This is about 7% of our roadway mileage, and they may be narrow. They're not subject to parking restrictions, but you can push, you know, through a through in most cases. Although there are some narrow ones that have special considerations, a lot of these, like, linear private ways are part of our regular snow routes. And then private dead ends make up about 7% of our roadway mileage, and they may be very narrow and also not subject to parking restrictions.

So they have this sort of, like, dual challenge. And then, like, city owned dead ends, there's nowhere to push snow. And I have a draft map here just to give you a sense of all the different dead ends and private ways throughout the city. This this map isn't perfect. It's missing I don't know if you are familiar with the area, and it's, like, a little hard to read.

I apologize. But so so here's DPW over here on Frannie Road, and this neighborhood behind it has a bunch of streets that end in dead ends like Henderson. So those aren't represented just because of the way the data is is represented in the GIS, but we're working with IAM to to sort of include these in account for them. And then I I had this sort of flash here. Unlike a linear plowing route, dead ends are spread across the city.

So when we talk about routes, it's easy to imagine a root in, like, the ward. This this area and this area, there's about, I don't know, like, 17 neighborhood throughout the city. And you can send a plow truck to it, and they can sorta noodle around the neighborhood and hit every street. When you're dealing with private ways, they're spread across the city. You're traveling from it's it's it's it's a less of a linear route and more of, like, a point to point.

So that provides its own challenge. K. So this is kinda like our thought process that through this. So in the past, routes were cleared after the storm or by a contractor throughout and after a storm. So at different times in the city's history, dead ends were handled in different ways.

So we hadn't had a big storm in a while, and we put three contractor plow trucks driving the city's dead ends. And very quickly, due to communication from residents, it became clear that this wasn't effective. So we in the storm, we dispatched staff that was not on a route. Like, we had superintendents out. The director of operations and I went out, and we're just taking reports and, like, going and trying to plow people out during the storms, but, yeah, it wasn't enough.

There was no way we could we could catch up. So we ended up having to clear snow as a removal operation after the storm. So we realized that this was not an adequate approach to these to these roads and not the service we would like to provide to residents. So the new plan is for storms up to four inches, we will have staff remove snow from dead ends after the storm when they've finished their roots, and usually this would mean backing into a dead end and pushing out. Right?

And then we identified a contractor with four small plow trucks and four small pieces of equipment that we could rotate through the dead ends throughout the storm with forecast less than eight inch of accumulation. And then when storm forecast more than eight inches, the plan is to bring in additional smaller equipment that can navigate the tight streets. And I'll give you a preview. That that small equipment is coming from the deprioritized separated bike facilities. And so in the second storm in February, we found this to be quite successful.

This wasn't in the the slides I sent, but I looked at the numbers, and there were, like, 266 service requests about dead ends alone in the January storm, and that went down to 56 requests in the February storm. And we there there was another storm, a smaller storm that we used as a similar method. Okay. Any questions on the dead ends? Alright.

So mobility infrastructure, we've we've talked about this already, but different bike and pedestrian facilities are handled differently. So the separated bike facilities have small equipment rotating through the routes. We devise these routes every year as we meet our statutory obligations for safe street streets and things like that. We we get more separated bike facilities. So each year, we're kind of rearranging the bike routes and sharing that with our staff and contractors and mobility and coming up with a plan.

And then the nonseparated bike facilities and community path is mostly handled by trucks and other large equipment while plowing plowing road routes, whether that means a non separated facility on a neighborhood street. Like, Street Willow Ave has a bike lane that gets sort of cleared by the the truck plowing the road or salting the road, and then the community path has, as I mentioned before, a truck running back and forth on the path. So here are the most recent bike separated bike facilities. This is a map we developed with mobility. I think we started with, like, three separated facility routes, and we're up to six plus the community path.

So if you see a small piece of equipment out, this is the routes that they're running for now until next year. And then just on to the community path, due to the design of this path, it's very difficult to maintain because it's narrow, and there's not a lot of places to push snow. So when we took over the path, we had a lot of anxiety about how were we going to keep this clear. So snow is handled jointly by DPW Grounds and DPW Highway with contractor support. We were able to keep the path open throughout the January storm due to light fluffy snow.

And I remember after that storm, I felt like, okay. Well, if, you know, if we could handle 23 and a half inches, there's nothing that will close this path. But that was a lot lighter snow than the February storm. It didn't have the blowing wind. So we you know, reality check-in February, we had to temporarily suspend operations.

And then we I think, you know, maybe there were eight inches left by the time they were that they abandoned the path. We just reassigned the truck to a different route, and then we cleared the remaining snow with the following. Okay. So I've kinda tipped my hand on this, but this is the approach that we've we've taken to mobility infrastructure. So we found that, like, running the snow routes throughout the storm wasn't effective for the reasons I explained that they were fighting against the plows, and it was not a good use of city resources to have the small equipment in there.

So the new approach was instead of running the routes with no benefit, we decided to run separated facilities as opposed to storm operation in storms over eight inches. Then And the results in February, we were able to clear separated facilities in the days following the storm. This freed up the bike, and I put bike in quotes because it's just equipment, but it's not specialized to bikes, but the equipment we use in the bike facilities to work in other areas during the storm, including on private waste dead ends and also helping with city and school clearance. K. Any questions on mobility infrastructure?

Keep it moving. And then the enhanced enforcement area, otherwise known as the sidewalk pilot, just to take you back in time, we work with mobility to select two key corridors, were Broadway and School Street. And at the time, they conducted a bunch of outreach at the start of the program. And so the basically, the process is ISD after a storm when its residents are supposed to have their sidewalks cleared by, I think, six hours after daylight after the storm ends. ISD conducts enforcement, issues citations.

ISD sends a list of violations to us, and then we clear sidewalks of properties of violation. We always do this in storms of four or more inches. Typically, those are snow emergencies, but sometimes one sneaks up on us. So we had two snow emergencies and one non snow emergency this year. So nine tickets on January 20, 14 tickets, and properties cleared on the twenty seventh, and 23 on the twenty fourth.

And I think you could probably chalk the numbers up to the weight of the snow. Okay. So there's been a lot of requests for potential improvements to the the process. We so we currently only conduct the pilot where there are over four inches of snow. We could expand the number of events to include enforcement removal of Broadway and school, any event where more than an inch of snow fell.

So any anytime you're really seeing accumulating snow, we could go out and do this pilot. And then I I think another way would be to expand enforcement. We can max out all snow tickets at 300, which I think is the max amount, expand the enforcement area, so, like, add an additional street or streets, and then also expand enforcement capacity. So currently, enforcement is done, like how do I put this? The I s I I don't wanna speak too much for ISD, but they have a number of priority areas that they enforce around schools, around elderly area like, elderly homes, and in the enforcement area, the pilot area.

And then beyond that, most enforcement is just done by three by by, like, resident request or three one one. So, like, if there was, like, broader enforcement capacity in the department, perhaps they could do more proactive enforcement. Councilor Hart?

Thank you. Through the chair to you. Could you just clarify for me, is was it all of Broadway or just a certain section?

It's all of Broadway and all of School Street.

Thank you.

K. So and then I just wanted to have some share some ideas we had for improvement. We're always looking for additional snow storage. We've been working with OSBCD and procurement to identify local and remote snow storage facilities. We found a couple of options.

I actually thank you to councilor Scott for putting us on some things we did speak to people. And then I think, eventually, we need to plan to transition to snow melting operations. We have a small snow melter. It is working. It's not our it can't be our whole solution, but it's gonna be part of the solution.

But I think, eventually, we need to look at having a snow melting facility, more to come on that. And then we're going to improve access to handicapped parking spaces. So this is something where historically, it was just sort of three one one driven. We're gonna contract a vendor to clear all ADA spaces that are covered in snow. So on the sort of the nonparking side, like snow gets pushed in.

So we're gonna try to do that proactively next year in larger storms or after snow snow emergencies. And then we wanna improve plowing operations. We're trying to staff up. We're trying to add additional vendors to support faster and more efficient snow removal operations, and we wanna work on training staff and organizing routes so that we are able to plow closer to the curve where appropriate. So that that is my presentation. I will entertain any other questions. And maybe

Okay. Share it. Well well, thank you for that that recap. What did you call it? Postmortem. Thank you for the postmortem. I have a couple of quick questions. I'm sure we all have a lot of questions. So as far as the pilot goes, though and maybe my memory needs some refreshing. But so School Street, what's supposed to happen, I believe, is if somebody doesn't shovel

Mhmm.

We'll we'll do it, but they'll get a ticket. That's right. Like, they'll get it. So how did how would it's just School Street, though, right, for the pilot?

It's School Street and Broadway.

It's Broadway too? Yes. I didn't realize we expanded it to Broadway. Okay. So, yeah, so just to get back to counselor, you and Campen, did you have any breakdown on, you know, just how many

Yeah. It was like yeah. What would say?

It's nine

tickets in the first storm, 14 tickets in the second storm.

I see. I got you. I got you.

I got you.

And but that's

just in the pilot. That doesn't include other tickets that they issued.

Okay. So, otherwise, the street was fairly fairly clear, sounds like. Okay. Alright. So that kinda covers that one.

So with the first one, just with regards to the first item around dead ends, private ways, and alleyways in a timely manner, you know, I do understand that it it's sort of like it's one of those things where, technically, the city doesn't have to clear the private ways, but we certainly do it. It behooves us to because, you know, if everybody can't get on the same page, have you maybe have people rented a place, maybe the owner. You know, we don't wanna have streets with snow if we need to get an emergency vehicle down there. Yeah. So but but I wanna just bring up and, again, first of let me just say from the outset that logistically, the things that you all do and just hearing, like, you know, kind of the anxiety you must get even when you hear snow in the forecast, I mean, it, you know, it it does not fall I mean, it's fall flat here.

But I just do I do wanna say I wanna kinda ask some of the questions. So this isn't like I'm not trying to give you hard time to ask some of the questions that the folks had out there. So one of the things so what so just to get back I know and you explained it, but, like, just to ask the question as far as, like, it and, again, I don't know. People's memories are know, you like you said, we hadn't really had any snow, so it's people's memories are probably short too where it's like they don't really remember. But one thing people were pretty sure of is that like, for instance, I'll give you one example.

Leicester Terrace, which is a dead end, private way both private way dead end, which is usually cleared. Actually, Harriet Randbig lives on that street. She's on the commish she's blind and she's on the commission. That street took a, you know, a really sort of I don't know the exact time frame, but it certainly took a lot longer. Like, I'm talking Yeah. Maybe even I don't wanna miss being this quarter, but at least, like, even the next day. Like, was an extended it felt like an extended period of time.

Yeah. Absolutely. It took too long. It took too long.

Okay. So this so this was something and and the reason why you said the reason why the dead ends and private ways were sort of they weren't deprioritized, but was there No. So the best way

I could explain it is that the plan we had was not sufficient for the private waste and dead ends. And, you know, I think I can only chalk it up to that we were, delusionable delusional about the ability of three trucks to handle that much snow. It just was not enough. It wasn't the right equipment. I think we were much more successful with the subsequent storm. We put more more equipment and smaller equipment on those routes and had them rotate through smaller routes. It was too much and not enough.

And I have more questions. I'm not gonna hog. I'm gonna jump around. I'm gonna go to council Scott in a second. But I do wanna ask on this same topic. You said there's 27 routes. So do you know office many streets per route is that roughly?

I I don't know.

You go by miles? Like, how many miles

Yeah. So so they are these are, like, long established snow routes that go back to hand drawn maps. That's right. Not to not to give you that's the way it's always been done because that's not the kinda answer I like to give, but we have established routes that go back a long time and they're sort of divided throughout the city. I wish I'd included a map in this that showed the snow routes. But

No. That's alright. I just really, my question was is but those 20 the the 27 routes and the way they like, that is all separate. Those streets and those routes are all separate from the dead ends and the private ways and the private dead ends.

Right. So, historically, from what I understand, and, I don't know how long ago this was, you would finish your roof. And if you had a smaller truck, then you would have a list of dead ends in your roof that you would back into and push out. And that's how they cleared the route the the dead ends historically. More recently, they had a contractor with a lot of, like, small equipment sort of more similar to how we're doing it now that would have dead end routes that they that they they split their crews up throughout the city, and they would sort of do it during the storm and after the storm.

I have distinct memories of 2022 seeing contractors removing snow from the dead ends around like, off cross street, like, around the Somerville Community School. So we're kind of moved back into a similar operation.

Yeah. Well, I mean, naturally, if you're near a school, it probably you know, you benefit from being near a school in terms of if you have a dent in your school, I would imagine, though, because the school's, like, priority, they're probably getting cleared. So there may have been some

Yeah. My concern was, like, the heavy equipment was still out at drop off or like, yeah, it was a it was a chaotic scene. That's all I sort of remember. But yeah.

Council Scott, and then we'll go to Council. Right? You're muted. Still muted, Kasa.

Sorry. I hit my lower hand. Didn't hit my mute button. I appreciate it. And, I do have a list here, but I'll try to be mindful of time, keep an eye on, how much of the clock I'm burning here. I really appreciate the presentation. I know we we talked during the storm a couple times, director Wiseman, and, hopefully, some of that that information in terms of additional snow storage was was helpful.

Yep.

I did, before I get into the very specific, concerns, I was con confused maybe or a little bit concerned. One of the later slides there had something about, dedicated snow melting equipment. Mhmm. And I'll be honest with you. I've followed the conversation in Boston, over snow melt equipment for a number of years.

And, you know, Boston's got enormously, larger resources than we do in terms of our budgets.

Mhmm.

And even in that case, the use of dedicated snow melting equipment is one that is a budget buster

Mhmm.

Over there, you know, given that we do have, a certain number of city owned lots, and also, let's say, underutilized properties where folks would be willing to help us out Mhmm. Either for minor rent, or not versus the the very high cost of purchasing or renting some old equipment. Yeah. I'm I'm concerned, I guess, I'd say, when I see that listed as a future priority. Can you tell us a little bit more about what the thought process is? Absolutely. Because, like, we do we do get the sun for free eventually.

No. I agree. Yeah. The the ultimate snow melter is the sun, and it's free. I agree completely.

And, you know, like, the the irony of these things talking about these things while while there's no snow on the ground isn't lost on me, and we do a lot of our snow preparation in sunny August. Our thinking about snow melters is that in a city as dense as Somerville, there's always going to be a higher priority use than piles of snow. I I I find it hard to believe that if the city were to, all of a sudden, get large pieces of land, they wouldn't try to make them open space. And that that is the right thing to be doing with it or developing them into housing or some other use for more residents. I think the advantage of snow melting operations is it lets you process snow in a much smaller footprint.

So while there are vacant properties now, I I do have to start thinking about five and ten years down the line and where operational space will be. I could imagine a situation where we have a small plot of land where we're melting almost as quickly as it's being dropped off. There aren't large piles of snow that linger into May, and then those spaces could be used, you know, for some other operational need, like low lay down space for the water and sewer department or, you know, storage of materials for another department. So that's what I'm thinking of. I think it's, like, the specifics are a conversation for the future, but I just can't imagine that anybody's gonna donate a big chunk of land long term to store snowing in Somerville.

No. And I I appreciate that, director. I just have to say for myself, between looking at 90 Washington Street and, say, Nissenbaum Lot and some of the other, let's say, long term areas that have stayed fallow, I can certainly understand it. Let's put it this way. I'd love it if we got to a point where every lot in the city was so heavily utilized that we were making a trade off of, you know, lord, there's a $5,000,000 per year tax, benefit to actually improving that property versus, what it costs us to maintain it as a snow storage lot. But I'll be honest with you. I don't think we're there yet.

Yeah. 100%. And as long as there's space to put snow, I will put snow there. Well,

on the and, counsel Scott, on this point real quick, I and I think it is important to really kinda go back into more or less recent recent history, which was that for for up until I I forget what year they stopped doing it. But, I mean, I know Boston, and I think we were carving snow and basically putting it into the harbor. Like, putting it into the ocean is what they used to do. And so since we stopped doing that, we have run into this storage issue when we do get big storms. I don't know about the melting thing, like, for, you know, a huge strategic piece, but I could see it making sense in terms of targeting, like, when you all go after into the squares.

Like, if you, like, if you were to set up a melter near, you know, Davis Square, and then you guys are just taking buckets, you know, to get rid of that snow. And it's because it because, you know, to truck it well, I don't know. I guess the numbers I've seen people say that to even to to truck it, it costs well, I I don't know it costs less to truck it than it does to to, I guess, they say. But, so I know the numbers would have to work out. I'm not I'm not I'm not coming down one way or the other. I hear what you're saying about space, but, I also hear council Scott's concerns. Mhmm. How's Scott? Sorry about that.

Hey. No problem, mister Share. So I I guess that was a large, bit kind of a bigger picture question. I I really appreciated the ticketing data on slide 23. I think that's really helpful. One of the things that, that actually obviously, I get a lot of calls about this, over the years, over the last decade. Good lord. And, you know, one of the things that actually helps folks is when I can tell them, hey. You know, we issued four tickets for the Beaumont machine shop because we know they don't shovel their sidewalk. We know it's hazardous.

We know it causes problems for folks. It's directly on the route to our Genziano. So having folks know that those tickets get issued is actually a big part of helping reassure people that the city is on the case and and caring for them at the very least. That said, I I also acknowledge that right now, the maximum ticket we can issue is 300. Yeah.

And I know that there is a related home rule petition before the council right now to expand how much we can charge folks for these tickets. I know there's been some concerns from some of my colleagues about not wanting the city to, write tickets that are too large, but, especially given the scope of, let's say, the income potential, or value of some of these properties, the $300 really has not proven to be a deterrent. Mhmm. Yeah. Some of these larger property owners, especially with these absentee landlords.

So one thing I I will ask, though, is, you know, we you've mentioned that there were places where we did go back and do follow-up snow clearance, in response to three one complaints. I believe we do have the capability or the legal authority of the city to bill people for services as opposed to fines for lack of compliance. So in those cases, are we billing the owners, for the time and costs the city incurs to do that clearance, and how would we calculate that if so?

So through the chair, yes. I I think there is that ability. The the way that we tried to do the pilot or the this area was to have it be sort of a more quick and dirty system. Just not removing making sure somebody got a ticket and then remove it. We've been able to do it all with internal staff resources, so it's really just the labor cost, but we could potentially calculate, like, the vehicle cost using FEMA rates or something like that.

The nice thing about the pilot is it's, like, a linear route, so you can just get a list of tickets and just shoot down Broadway and then just shoot down School Street. So it's pretty efficient. But, yeah, that is a possibility. Like, if we you you that's not to say that they couldn't get the ticket and get charged for the removal operation. Yep.

That's right. And then because part of this is me thinking about how to how this scales beyond

Yeah.

A pilot on one or two streets. This is something that, you know, I oh, well, I'll I'll I'll get to Oak Street in a second. But, you know, I'll say that, you know, we have used contractors here in the city for as long as I can recall

Mhmm.

To supplement the city crews and to greater or lesser extent to one contractor or another, you know, and without getting into who owns what contractor and and, to what extent we've used them, I think it's pretty straightforward to acknowledge, that we have a cost that we incur. Absolutely. A particular cost that wouldn't have to necessarily be calculated on FEMA rates, but even just based on the, hours that we use for contractors.

Yeah. That's a great idea. I hadn't thought of that, that we could just even though I mean, that it may be, like, a law and being questioned, but that would be a great way to peg the cost of this just as a hourly rate based on the contractors. Yep.

Because we know what we pay, and we're paying those contractors every year. And for every for every piece of snow that we can't clear as a city, we're we're paying contractors anyway. Mhmm. So I I would love to come back to that because I think there is a larger, piece about where, let's say, whether it's due to, consistent bad actors, a single a one off occurrence, or just, recognizing the need for public safety to have some of these things cleared, ensuring that we're not succumbing to the tragedy of the commons here any more than we already are is something that, that obviously is is on my mind. So I I'll come back to that in a in a second.

I guess, I also wanted to say thank you for the the maps there on, slide 15 for the dead ends and slide 19 for the the bike infrastructure routes. I did have a question about slide 19 because I believe you had mentioned that those and I'll be apologize. I don't have my reading glasses, so this might be on me. But you you was talking about a separated bike facility list. And as I looked at the route number two there, I believe that's Webster, that it goes goes down Beacon, goes down, Washington, goes down Webster, and then through Boynton Yards there.

I was just a little confused because not all of that I mean, obviously, Beacon, for the most part, has separated facility. Washington Street, for the most part, has separated facility. I'm guessing the interstitial connection there. There are stretches where it's not separated, but we still have it as part of the route just because you can't keep them one place to end up. Is that right?

Yeah. Like, there's even some places on Broadway where there's not a separated facility, but they're still out there, and they're still expected to keep their blade down or their brush on.

You

know what? I'm gonna start using that for the times when I'm, still on my job after I'm not supposed to by just saying I gotta keep my blade down.

Yeah. You gotta keep your blade down.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hey. I'm stepping I'm stepping away, vice chair Hart. Just take the controls if you need to, but that's all. I'll be right back.

Yeah. Be careful, counselor Hart. I might take over the whole dang meeting. So, I guess, I was curious. There was a reference there, and I wasn't sure if it was something I missed in the earlier slides about, deprioritized separated bike facilities Yeah. And equipment reassigned for this in

So just to recap, we found that in the bigger storm, this is the January storm, that the small bike equipment couldn't keep up with the the snow.

And so Oh, okay. Alright.

So rather in in a big storm, like, eight inches, we're going to reassign those to schools and to dead ends to sort of try to keep up with those and then move back to after the storm has removed operation in those facilities. Because, like, we were running them for the whole storm, and they would just lay as soon as they've gone down a street, a plow would come and push the snow right back in. They were really fighting against each other, so it wasn't a productive use of, time and money.

Yeah. No. And I appreciate that. And I also wanna acknowledge that not all dead ends and private ways are created equal. Right? Yeah. Keeping Park Place clear is relatively easy. It's wide, and it's got a dead end that you can't that you really can pile, things up to a 20 foot wall. Some place like Laurel Place, for example, is yep. I I could go through a greatest hits list here in Ward 2.

Know. Please.

Please you know. So, I just I do acknowledge that those are those are challenging. And a lot of this, does come down to the driver's familiarity. As you said, there's you know, when somebody gets into their route, it used to be the practice that, hey. You know, you'll back down one of these and push things out in the street. A lot of that, you can't make up for necessarily by policy in the same way that you can with just having somebody who's driven that route for years in the the neighborhood who knows, you know, that Ms. McNamara needs

Absolutely. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

So in terms of how does that impact our contracting versus in house capacity kinda disclosure and decision making?

So

before my time, my understanding is that there were many more people on the plow list, and it wasn't just highway. People would would plow from other city departments. There was there's two, basically, two lists. There's snow one, which is the highway department, and snow two, which is all other s m e a SMEU stat that wanna sign the list. There is less and less interest in plowing outside of highway, although we do have a nice cohort of people that join from other departments, and we really appreciate them.

I think as we staff up and we have been staffing up, we're up we're gonna have more and more people plowing. We're also, I think, to speak frankly, seeing a generational shift in some of the some of the staff that, you know, ten years ago would have been out in every storm is picking and choosing that they'd rather stay home. But generally speaking, yes, I a 100 agree with what you'd say. Like, ideally, you have people in the roots that know the roots, that they have the roots year after year. We try not to move people unnecessarily.

We try to train them in their roots. We run a preseason drill in November. Whether you're new or you've been there years to run your route, look at new mobility infrastructure that's happened, be aware of road construction that might have changed. So, like, we do what we can to train staff. I think also many people have who work for the DPW have never plowed a 23 inch storm before.

So I think there there is, like and it's tough to train for that unless we go up to Canada or something, which I wouldn't rule out. But, yeah, I I 100% hear what you're saying. I agree with you. It'd be I wish we could just have, like, the same people in their neighborhoods plowing the same roots year after year. There is some turnover. Some people, you know, like, have to learn their roots Sure. In a given year. Yeah.

Sure. And, I mean, I you know, some of this is, like you said, unavoidable operational, turnover. And some of it is, you know, also when we change contractor Mhmm. We lose a lot of, that institutional knowledge that inherently has been stored in those contractors rather than, in house personnel. I'm curious about this, volunteer list, the snow b list. Gotcha. Is folks that have that, like you said, work for the city Yes. Got trucks for them, but or are they bringing their own trucks and plow?

No. No. No. Just so they they work for there are some people in water that like their own truck. But yeah. And so it's, like, other people in the city that are, like, not in highway. So it's some people that are in other GPW divisions. It's some people that are in other city departments. Like, we have a handful of people from ISD, engineering, water, some people from, like, lights and lines that don't otherwise do snow operations. And they are a huge help, and we really appreciate them. And so we always go to go through those lists before we call even one contractor.

Oh, that's that's excellent. Well, you know, I gotta tell you, I'm I'm very interested in this list, and, this job that I'm sitting in doesn't pay very well. So if you got an extra truck

Let's talk.

Interested. Yeah.

Let's talk.

So, I guess, coming back to the specific operational questions here.

Yep.

You know, one of the main questions that I get over and over is about plowing to the curb on the street parking, you know, odd parking side, even parking side. And I I think folks generally get the intention here, right, is we wanna leave space for the plow trucks to operate and for us to push Mhmm. The snow somewhere. People tend to have the idea, though, well, let me start with, memories are tricky things.

Mhmm.

And one of my colleagues, I think, gotten a little bit of hot water on a neighborhood mailing list when folks complained about they've never seen snow clearance so bad before. And, and he actually pulled out photos of the last seven storms and said, well, you know, the street looks pretty much the same from my window of all these. So so I get it. Memories are tricky. And when you're having a hard time, it's, not the easiest time to compare, against past performance. But that said, one of the questions we get oh my gosh.

Sorry.

No. They're we're saving energy here in the city. Yeah. We are. Yeah.

They they they unplug the computer on me if they could.

That said, I know one of the questions I get a lot is, you know, why would we even have to move our cars if they're not gonna bother to plow plow that side of the street? And I think some of the answer might be, well, snow's gotta go somewhere. But, also, I was hoping maybe you could talk about the city's rationale and strategy for, you know, some emergency parking restrictions and

Yeah.

The intention is or the direction is for plow drivers when, say, the odd side is clearing cars?

Sure. So the the reason we call snow emergencies is to allow our plows the space to operate. That's why we only do it in larger storms. We try to only do it when a storm is forecast to be over four inches. And we'll we look at multiple things in terms of, like, what the forecast is following that, you know, if it's gonna be five inches but 69 degrees, like, in April you know, March or April storm, you know, we might declare snow emergency, etcetera, etcetera.

But the the idea is really to give our plows room to operate. A lot of people have different feelings about how close to the sidewalk we should plow for you know, some be in the same storm, someone can say we pushed too close to their curb. Some people say, obviously, we didn't push close enough. One really nice woman that we we we were working on a snow issue said asked if we could plow to the curb but not over. So, like, we're we're dealing with a and, like and, you know, she she meant that I think, you know, she wants snow to come right up to the curb, but not spill too far onto the sidewalk so that it's burdensome to clear.

And if you think about a 24 inch storm on a 12 foot roadway pushing that onto a a six foot sidewalk, and these are all sort of generous measurements. It's a lot of snow to move on to onto the sidewalk. Smaller storms, absolutely, we should be pushing to the curb. It's something that I think that we need to restress with our staff, need to retrain with our staff, get into more practice tandeming with people. We often have multiple pieces of equipment on our route.

I think we could do better, but I think we also just have to accept the fact that people are gonna be frustrated with where that snow goes. And we we do not try to plow people in. We do not intentionally push snow in. Like, in the second storm, we made an executive decision that we wherever we could, we were going to push what was what had not melted between January and February. We were gonna push as much of it away to make room for the next storm.

So it's a you know? And, like, I would say, also, like, as the streets have become narrower, we're using smaller equipment in the streets so that we can maybe call fewer snow emergencies, have smaller equipment in the roads, but the downside is that they can't push as much. Right? So you're having smaller equipment, requires less licensure, more people can be on the snow snow too, can participate in these snow emergencies. It gets more complicated, and there's more to sort of consider.

So, yeah, I I would like to say that, like, going forward, we hope to push closer to the curb, particularly in snow emergencies, but there are downsides to that in terms of, like, what people will have to shovel.

No. I think that's true, and I think there's obviously a a balance of equities or a concern about, you know, how much are we performing road clearance for private car storage on public ways. Mhmm. Yeah. So I I I get that.

I think it's just, I think being able to articulate clearly to the public what the priority is and what the philosophy is is Yeah. Will help, help folks to get clear in their head. And if they, you know, if they have a problem with it, well, that's a political issue. But it it certainly, I feel like, would help to cut short some of the perennial debates, let's say, that happen amongst neighbors.

Yeah. I can I can imagine, like, a one sheeter diagram could be really helpful to people? Yeah. Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah. Because at least then the expectation is clear, and folks will know, like, hey. We we're not asking you to move your car so that we can make sure the outside parking is clear the day after the storm. We're we're asking you to move your car so that we don't hit it, and we've got a place to to push the snow, and it is gonna mean that there's some private snow clearance. It's gonna be required if you wanna get access to the parking space. So You know? And I'm not saying that's the intent, but pardon my apologies, counselor Hart. Did you wanna follow-up on that?

Pardon me. I don't mean to interrupt, but before we changed off the subject, I did wanna ask some follow-up questions. So

Go for it. I'll I'll hang back. I gotta I got about three more things on my list.

Folks so, folks, I mean, I'm just gonna put it out there. I mean, usually, these meetings, you know, if it's really a short agenda, then we go, you know, whatever is long not, you know, not for that long. But where there is a lot I mean, I'm I'm fine with going to 08:00. So, like but not beyond that, but I'm saying, so we have time. There's a lot of items here. There's nine items on the agenda, then, of course, there's so much so many questions to go along with this postmortem of the snowstorm. So feel free to jump around as well.

Okay. Thank you, chair. And thank you, counselor Scott. And I just wanna say on this topic, it was something that I got a lot of questions about. I really appreciate this discussion.

And, also, just to go back, I really appreciate your presentation. I had a couple of constituent concerns about this particular issue that I'd love to get your thinking on. One was just an observation. I don't know if you would agree with this that that the parking on the even or odd makes things more passable in the immediate aftermath of the storm, like, the first day or two. But then beyond that, this resident saw limited benefit.

Mhmm. And so I'm curious about that. I'm curious if you could reflect on like, before we had this policy, you know, what what benefit have you seen from since this policy was was instituted? So that's one question. The Sure.

The sec if I could just ask the second. It's very related. Was a constituent who raised the issue about, with climate change, we know that storms are gonna be, more we're gonna see increased snowfall. So we're gonna have more of these big snowfall events where it is it is tricky. But just reflecting on the odd even policy given that expectation going forward in the future, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Sure. So so I guess maybe I'll take the second part first. The I have only existed in this capacity in a post flipping world. So I I know that historically, the snow emergencies were always on the even side. People always parked on the odd side.

I think what happened I don't believe that that was changed for reasons of operational efficiency or snow removal ease. It was strictly because it was frustrating to the people on the even side of the road that their driveways would always get loud in. So I guess I am I think, like, from a enforcement and operational standpoint, it would be easier if things didn't change. Right? People would know their route one way, and that's the way it would be.

This is, I think, way above my pay grade, but I don't think that the that the ruling was or the the change was put in place for an operational reason reason. Somebody with more experience than me could correct me on that, but that's that's my sense of it.

Actually, that I'm sorry to interrupt again, but that that's my mistake. I was misremembering and thinking just back to that change and thinking that we didn't have single side parking prior to that.

Oh, yeah.

Two. But I guess so compared to communities that I believe don't have that sort of policy where you can park on either side of the street, like, I believe Cambridge.

So so Cambridge still does snow emergencies, and they still do have restricted parking. They actually do it in a different way than we do where they'll even keep some parking restrictions in place even after the snowstorm is over. They have a really cool snow map that they update regularly. So I think maybe they have like, some cities like Cambridge and Boston have different restrictions based on the time of like, or the the size of the street. Like, they have to clear from major roads, but not neighborhood roads.

I'm not exactly sure. And then other cities like Watertown have no winter parking. You know? And, like, in a snow emergency, there's no parking allowed on either side of the street. I don't know to what degree they enforce that, but I think, like, yeah, there's there's all different flavors of snow enforcement.

I think the feedback I get from my staff that have to actually plow the streets is they need snow emergencies. And if anything, they would like more of them because they want to be able to to do their snow removal operations without damaging people's property, without damaging city property, that's where they come from. It's, like, very nothing gives me more anxiety than a foreign storm. Right? Because a foreign storm could easily be a eight inch storm or it could be a zero inch storm. And you you hate to call a snow emergency when it when there shouldn't be one, and you also hate to call not call a snow emergency when you need one.

Mhmm.

So yeah. So I guess I'll I'll withhold judgment on whether or not there should be, you know, snow emergencies or alternate side parking. As to, like, does it get worse after? I I know what you're, like, what you're describing, I think. Like, during the storm, yes. Well, like, we're operating. We're clearing snow. The snow emergency is lifted. And what was once, like, a clear 12 feet of passage, now there's cars parked on both sides. Maybe I don't wanna park on the other side all the way up to the curb because I'll have to climb out the window to get out of my car.

So then I'm a foot away from the snowbank. Yeah. I do think it's an issue, and that's where we're talking like, that's the time of the season where we're having constant communication with the fire department, and they're saying, jeez. We're getting really uncomfortable with how narrow Walnut Street is, and then working with them to do to post removal and clear, you know, for for public safety. Or a trash truck can't get down their roofs. That's not just public safety. Mhmm.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And any thoughts on the, like, increase of big storms and how that might affect policies?

I you you know, like, I I haven't given it much thought. Like, I think we do have a good framework here for how to handle storms. I think, like, my recollection of 2015 is that they were that they resisted lifting snow emergencies for longer. So if we're in a situation where, like, there's more big storms, maybe we look at going towards a, you know, all year round snow emergency. I'm always amazed where where these cars go during the snow emergency, and then they all of a sudden appear.

It's like some sort of parking miracle. But yeah. I I I don't know. Again, above my pay grade, I I think, like, you know, like, we should look at, like, maybe keeping the snow emergencies in place longer to keep the streets clear or lifting in certain streets and not lifting in others to keep them clear for public safety and things like that.

Thank you.

But not committing to anything in case anybody gets it.

Of course. Of course. Just have the conversation. And I have some further questions, but I'll hold them to allow the other counselors a chance. Thank you.

Alright. Do you mind if I jump back in here, mister chair, just to clear a couple more?

Yeah.

Alright. Well so I appreciate the discussion. Thank you, councilor Hart. Thank you, director. The two two biggest concerns, or two biggest problem areas we had were, I think, one, operationally, was actually handled really well, on the last storm we had, which was in terms of clearing teacher parking. You know, the Bumpass Bridge is a pretty essential facility there. So I I just wanna acknowledge that it wasn't handled well early.

Yeah. It

was a great adjustment.

Yeah. I wanna thank you for putting that on my radar. That was a priority for us.

Well, I mean, definitely a priority for everybody who likes using the superiority of our Ginliano. So and for the teachers. So I appreciate that. And I think it shows that we can, make adjustments, improvements. So I Sure. I just wanted to acknowledge that. The honestly, one of the most problematic, concerns we had, and I know this was a joint venture between inspectional services and DPW, was the shenanigans that happened down on Houghton Street, the Houghton, Oak, and Bolton area. That was where we had video of a private construction contractor, clearing the spaces in front of their project, and dumping that snow on the ADA ramps and

the

cuts that residents had cleared there. I know that's a complicated enforcement situation there. I was wondering if because I know there's definitely folks in the neighborhood watching tonight. If you could talk a little bit about that, scenario and how the city, you know, maybe didn't have a playbook when it happened, but what our playbook is going forward for that handling that kind of bad actor?

Yeah. Yeah. Again, I appreciate the the residents documenting that and providing the context. And I don't you know, like, clearly, there's some background there with the contractor and parking issues and stuff in the city. You're certainly not allowed to put snow onto the onto the street, onto like, put snow onto the sidewalks. Sorry. The the pipes are participate Sorry. Yeah. No. Yeah.

I'll I'll just talk through this. I apologize for the noise. But the yeah. So so this is something that we would coordinate with ISD about, and then I think, ultimately, we just send staff out to remove those, scoop those out. So, I think, like, because there was some ambiguity about who was involved and whatnot, something I'm maybe happy to follow-up with ISD to have a clear plan.

I know it's happened in the past. I it was probably 2022. There was a business that cleared out their small parking lot, which went into a separated bike facility, and there was no doubt about where the snow had come from. So we just called ISD, had them take it, and then we went in and cleared that. Yep.

Oh, I mean, can I just jump in on that? Mean, I saw I remember seeing a a conversation on Reddit, and some people were fairly sympathetic to to the they go like, oh, this is about a private plow situation. But where do you expect them to put it? It's like, same place I put my landlady's, like, back in the yard. So, basically, just because you're in a plow and you don't wanna get out of the plow, you should have to plow it into a pile and then get a snow take a snowblower or a pickup truck and snow blow it into the yard.

Like, you can't you're you know, just like we don't we don't let people discharge water into into the public way or the like, people that should be a strong message sent to people who utilize private plowing companies to do their driveway or, you know, parking lots, like, that they cannot put that snow onto our streets. They're the worst offenders of blocking the ADA ramps and stuff too. Yes. That's something that I'm gonna be be, like, be pursuing. Anyway sorry.

No. I mean, it's it's fair, and I I know it, grinds your gears, as well, mister chair. I guess, you know, this goes back to maybe the earlier conversation I had about, you know, billing rates for, private clearance here. And it's a tough one in that particular case because the contractor actually picked up you know, used their bobcat to pick the snow up and move it, in some cases, even a block away.

Yeah.

So, you know, by billing the property owners where the stuff got piled up, you know, again, it's a thorny enforcement issue. I understand.

We have regular meetings with IST. I'd be happy to bring it up.

Yeah. I I just especially in a case like this where it was documented from multiple residents and multiple videos. Yeah. Subcom picture there.

Totally unacceptable.

Yeah. You know? And I guess one of the one of the things that is heartbreaking about that is I know how hard, folks in the city work to keep things clear and how you know, really, like you said, they're not trying to plow anybody in. But when something like this happens, people's first response is, well, the city must have done this to me. Because who else is out there dumping snow for me?

Mhmm. Yep.

They're plowing up sidewalks. And I just don't think that's fair for for anybody on the city side.

I Yep.

Absolutely. Don't need more hostility towards folks just driving a plow, for the city in these snow events. Now I guess my final my final and I'll make this my my final little gripe, is I did get a fair number of complaints from folks where the bike infrastructure was right going back to the Bumpass Bridge. Right?

The

bike structure is right there next to the sidewalk, which is the main route. And, unfortunately, there just wasn't any place for that snow to go. Yeah. It wasn't a scoop out situation. It was one where, you know, I I watched the little plow out there just kinda slamming, backing up, slamming again, backing up, slamming again. And so a lot of that snow ended up spilling over the wall and, creating a blockage, on the sidewalk there that had been pretty

Oh, okay.

So, I know, again, some of this is unavoidable. Yes. But it's those kind of misses that, I think, lead to, I don't know, public irritation Yeah. Sure. Decay of public trust.

So I appreciate that we're always working on, those case by case, issues, and I appreciate that, you know, we're looking at, snow removal holistically. Like you said, there's the question of how many of those snow emergencies to call, and I pretty sure we've had a couple conversations in the last few council years where the snowfall was well below average, and yet our snow removal budget was Mhmm. Above budgeted. We were overbudgeted on snow removal, and I know a lot of that is also to keep contractors happy because contractors do not have to work for the city. They could go work for other municipalities.

There's no shortage of folks who need trucks in these events. And so I know that we have occasionally called maybe more snow emergencies than strictly necessary just to keep contract So

so I'm gonna push back on that. I will say that there are some fixed costs of snow fighting. Like, we have to purchase some amount of of salt and ice melt, and then there's overtime costs. And I think, like like, there there is a certain amount that you're, like, in for no matter what. And then, like, once there is a a not just a snow emergency, but, like, a three in storm, we might still need to bring contractors in.

And we're not we're certainly not manufacturing snow emergencies to bind the pockets of contractors. It's a 100% operational. I would love nothing more than to stay home and not oversee a snow emergency operation. I promise you. And the the, the pockets of the contractors are the least of my concerns.

No. Understood. And I'm not saying that well, I'm not gonna use anybody's names. Yeah. I'm not saying it's a profiteering engagement here, but it is certainly it is certainly the case where, you know, we we do have to take that in consideration. I just think it's another example. When we look at what we budget for snow removal and look at, you know, what years we run way over versus what years we run a little bit over because Mhmm. I hate to get in the weeds here. Municipal finance, snow removal budgets is, like, the one place where we can run deficit Yeah. Where things get a little bit wibbly wobbly.

So I I don't wanna go that far into the weeds, but I do just for me, it continues to come back to, both for familiarity, for continuity, and for, overall cost control. You know, the more that we can continue to expand capacity in house and, bring those costs within our control, I think the better the service is and the better the predictability is for everybody. So I'll leave it with that. And Yeah.

I agree with you 100%. I will say, like, the more in house we can do for snow fighting, the better. I agree. One of the benefits of contracted labor is that, you know you know, like, we don't need to have 50 sort of pieces of equipment and staff on standby at all times. Right? It's like this is, like, one of the the circumstances where it makes sense to staff up quickly and then break down quickly seasonally. But I agree a 100%. Like, if we could do it all in house, that would be my dream.

Yeah. Well, one day. Mhmm. Mister chair, I appreciate the the indulgence, and I'll I'll step aside.

Sure. Alright. So I just have a couple things real quick. So I, you know, I think it's important to set the table as far as, like, what the actual function of the DBW and the plowing is in terms of, like it's mostly for public safety to get, like make sure that we can get vehicles down the roads and stuff like that. I think that sometimes people forget forget that piece of it.

I you know, so overall you've addressed overall snow great. Like, certainly, like, parking is is always gonna be people are gonna get upset when we lose the when we lose the parking. I do remember when we used to alternate, and I do think it probably became a fairness thing. I also remember when we used to go closer to the curb, and I thought that people we stopped getting as close strategic because people were getting upset that, you know, that the snow the heavy snow was ending up on the sidewalk. Mhmm.

I don't know if counselor was talking about if there's anywhere that you don't move the cars at all. I'm trying to remember if that was ever the case in some of it when I was a kid if whether or not, you know, that, I guess, it would depend on the size of the storm because if you have, you know, 16 inches of snow and you go down the middle, you can certainly push your path down, but it's gonna basically bury in the Both sides. Yeah. The both the sides of the of, like, the cars, which I I wanna I feel like we used to dig out or something. But but but so I don't I don't you know, as far as whether we should not switch back and forth, whether we should, whether it's even worth you know?

Because a lot of people were saying that. Like, why do they have us move the car as if you know? And I know you said it varied. Like, some of the contractors, maybe they were a little light handed on, like, how close they went. And I don't know if that's just because they're just focused on literally a 12 foot path only, and they they don't they don't wanna have to come, you know, back. I'm not sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's just the con I'm sorry. If I I'm I'm guessing that Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Go ahead.

I don't think it's just the contractors. It's our own staff too. Like so, yes, there is, like I've been out there with a plow driver when we, you know, pushed back while people were shoveling, and you can see how upset they get. And I think there's also, like, a fear of hitting your plow on the curb the closer you get. So, like, I think for a number of reasons, people get shot like, curb shy, but I think that's something that we can work on with with training.

Right. And just another question that would just kinda clear up a There's

a way you can sort of split the split the difference, I think.

One another question just because it kinda clears up a mystery. So a lot of people there was a so there was a period where you'd you'd you'd have a plow go by, and then all of a sudden and I you know, I you could speculate as whether or not maybe you're waiting for this snow to build up. I was telling people that I believe it was their sort of legally mandated break that people were on, But there was many people who got really concerned because there was, like, an eight hour period where there no plow went by, during that day on the second storm. Is could you just clear clear up what that might have been if it is the fact that, you know, we do have to take these guys So so yeah.

By law, every twenty four hours, there should be six hours of rest for people operating mainly from CDL equipment, but it's it was reinforced through through a decision prior to my coming here. So, yeah, that we we do try to schedule those breaks carefully based on sort of, like, how long guys have been on, guys or gals have been on, how long like, is there a lull in the storm? Sometimes you kinda have to just take a break at not the ideal time, but because we need to give people breaks.

Yeah. I know this is only one time. Like, it's such short period of time every year, but so two things I'm gonna this is just more throwing this out there, and I've just kinda talked to the mayor about, like, a snow core where, like, you know, maybe even revamping the team traveling program because I feel like that it it's a little cumbersome to deal with, I know this is separate from this, but to deal with, like, you know, the the the seniors having to get corded and all that. Maybe that's the way we just go around as a team. But, or maybe, like, an, adopt a a curb cut, but the the the main thing is, that I wanted to bring I don't wanna miss these items around the handicap parking spot.

I know you did address that in the in the slideshow and said that you were going to I guess, you you would have a list of all of those particular spots. I know that three one one was good about well, you know, you guys were good about responding to a three one one where I did if I did have a a resident who didn't have driveway access or anything like that and they had a penny dedicated handicap spot outside that, you know, you guys put the stake in there and and tried to get to it as quick as you could. Mhmm. But so and, also, I wanna say that, you know, that was one of my big. I tried to get language because I know that it technically right now is the is the the onus is on the property owner as far as if you abut a curb cut slash pedestrian crossing, you know, ADA ramp.

So I don't know that everybody knows that. And I guess just things to take back is if you could, like I don't know if you I know we have however many miles of road on the numbers, and then you have to obviously double that for sidewalks. But a few things, I know we've talked about the potential of, like, clearing all the sidewalks. Like, I'm I'll probably put I'll probably put a council order in about, like, pricing that out or whatever.

Alright. I'm

gonna so I'm gonna turn it back over because we are getting short on time.

I I would be curious, councilor Cleans. Do you know anybody around here that's doing that?

No. But, like, people always cite to me, like, other like, place in other states, like like, Rochester. You know? And I get it that our streets are unique and that there's some squeeze points, but I'm just saying, like, you know, if we could get it manageable, I don't know if it'd be in the trillions of dollars. Like, that's what I mean. If we could just play it out just to see. And, again, I know it's such a small period, but that's why I always feel like two snow becomes a a weird scenario where we you know, it doesn't happen that often enough that we, you know, don't really explore these things, but and, you know, whatever. Let's just go back to, my colleagues, but I do wanna address specifically the handicap ramp and stuff like that if we have if we still have time, but I see questions. We'll go to councilor. You have you have the floor.

You haven't really said much. Everyone said much.

Thank you, chair Klingon. I just wanted to say a few things particular to the western part of the city in my ward. One, just to convey to any viewers in Ward 6 or in Ward 7, I didn't actually realize this until after the first storm. But on the city's website, the snow clearing page, you can find information about a Tufts garage that you can park in during a snow emergency, but you do have to register. You have to email them to register ahead of time.

So just wanted to let anybody in Ward 6 Or 7 who might be watching this know about that option. And then a few kind of pain points that I in Ward 7 that I saw that I still have questions about. One is if you could say more about the Dilboy lots and what is or isn't available for emergency parking. That end of the city has very few options for you know, there's no city lots other than the Dill Boy lots to park in and and the Tufts Garage. But just wondered if you could say something about that.

Teal Square, we didn't see much, you know, in the days following the storm of snow removal, and so I wanted to just be sure that that's on the public square. I know it's not the top priority, but just wanna be sure Teal Square is included in public squares that are cleared because we didn't see Yeah. Much of that. And then third, I appreciated councilor Scott's questions around the sidewalk. And there are several abandoned properties that, you know, the sidewalk just never got shoveled after repeated tickets.

And so I'd love to know, if those will be, you know, be able to be, plowed, cleared, and then the path build, like like in the pilot, that would be great going forward. So the I just wanted to put those all out there. Would love to hear your your comments. Thank you.

Sure. Sure. So, for the Dilboy Lots, we use those as, like, where we where we host the towing operations. So that's why they're not available during snow emergencies. I think once the emergency is lifted or once the tow truck is like, vacates it, the operation shuts down, basically.

They can people can park there, I believe, but they should consult parking because that's sort of beyond the scope of PPW. The second question was about Teal Square. So Teal Square should be cleared with the other squares. It's considered one of the clearance squares. So when we're doing snow clearance, Teal Square is one of the one of the the squares. It's not less than the other square, so I'm surprised to hear that. I'll follow-up internally about that. I I was really surprised to hear that. And then the last question was about, like, repeated ticketing areas. Yeah.

We have not done the like, a sort of billing process in the past. That's something we can look at for next year. But I think, like, enforcement questions, may wanna follow-up with ISD about particular. I think they they and, like, you know, I don't know exactly, but, like, for rodent issues, like, they have, you know, certain like, if there's a problem property, they have certain things that they can do for problem property. So I don't know if that's available for snow or, enforcement or not. That would be sort of

in their wheelhouse. Just to follow-up quickly, I think, you know, the big the what we want to happen I mean, ideally, we want the property owner to take care of it. But the in the immediate term, we want people to be able to walk on the

side Absolutely.

And not have to go into the street. So I think it would be beneficial to just clear it and if there if that's possible. But thank you.

Councilor Scott?

Thank you, mister chair, and I promise I'll keep it brief. I I acknowledge you'd like to keep cap on this, and I'll be honest with you. Tonight is my twentieth anniversary, so I am

in deep Congratulations.

Deep trouble for how late we go tonight. I think I'm gonna get billed by the minute.

I'll try to be brief.

I just wanted to bring up, since we're talking about bike infrastructure and, the plowing, you know, the a lot of work went in to making sure that we had concrete, separators on the bike lane on Washington Street, and one might be forgiven, for considering, that it might be the mission of, certain clock drivers to make sure every one of those concrete curves got torn out of the ground. But let's just say this way, where where some of these snow piles have been piled up, there's a a very large, collection of excess, concrete barriers that were, taken out. I know this is always a tension, and I appreciated what you said about the dry run that happens in November. But I just didn't know if that had been part of the postmortem discussions and if you had anything to relay because I've been contacted, not just by parents at the school who are, worried about the large amount of concrete and rebar still left in the yards. The snow piles melted, but also from, obviously, pedestrian and transit and bicycle advocates who are concerned about what is frankly one of the best new streets in Somerville, getting a little bit worn up there.

No. Yeah. No one has reached out directly to me on that. I will say that we are, we have ordered a bunch of flex posts to be replacing flex posts. It's I think, you know, this year was kind of an eye opener about how many flex posts could be knocked over because it's we haven't had a storm or winter like this where we've had they, you know, lost so many. So I think you're gonna see our staff out replacing bike infrastructure very, very soon, and I will certainly follow-up about the those those concrete curves.

Yeah. I mean, maybe that's one to take up with director Ross and and a cross collaborative meeting just because I know that, for example, in that project, the city's budget for repaving and reconditioning that street actually came up a little bit short, and director Rawson devoted some of his transportation budget to making sure we could get those concrete curbs installed. So

Yeah. It sounds like

we'll be we'll be spending some highway budget to get them reinstalled.

Well, you know what? I I love having the highway guys. They have more work to do.

Yep.

Yep. Speaking of which, I gotta call you about a sidewalk panel tomorrow.

So Okay. We'll talk.

Thank you, mister.

Sure. Oh, you're welcome. So I just gotta do a lightning round recap. So, number two, mistakes made, lessons learned, your plan going forward. Number three, by and large, the the pilot program is working as intended. Tickets were given for the most part. I don't know if I can attest that in my area or not. I know that that this I don't know. Are we going to the to the actual 36 inch? Like, are we getting out there? Only because there's a church old funeral home at the corner of Sycamore and Broadway that and they have a bunch of young able-bodied people on there.

This has come up before. I get constant

I get constant complaints that they're not and they have a big, you know, area. Right? Because they're they're on Sycamore and Broadway, and it's, route to school. So but I know that alright. So, anyway

Yeah. So so those are those are enforcement questions. I can't speak to how they measure. This no. This is just about the pilot here.

And then number four, we pretty much covered, I mean, as part of the postmortem. I I guess as as far as what councilor Scott you and Kempen was saying about about resources or policies, I guess. You know, obviously, resources, money, always we could always use more. As far as policies, I think that that's probably on the, you know, it's probably on the the mayor's office to kind of, like, look at how we're communicating these the policies, essentially. Right?

Like like or even talking about why, you know, we may not go as close. We may we may not, you know, go to close the curve. Number five, we didn't really get an ant like, a question and answer on number five. So policy prohibiting parking on alter alternating sides of the street, general, and emergency. It So we intend on continuing the alternation. Right? I mean, like, actually, like, we kinda got here out of in the name of fairness because people felt like, hey. Our side, you know, we we know every year, it's the same old thing. You know? Did that kind of help clarify, counsel Hart?

Yes. I I mean, I feel like the discussion covered it. And it was really my poor wording in the resolution because I really meant prohibiting parking on one side of the street rather than the, you know, the just the policy overall of not allowing parking on both sides of the street. So I feel like we did cover that.

Okay. Alright. And then the the, so the two the two ones, like I said, I and I know we're close to to eight here. But so it sounds like with the with the the handicap parking spots, you do you, your intention is to prioritize those spots. Yes.

Probably, can get a list from traffic and parking or whatever. We have the list. Okay. I put those in the alright. But then very specifically, though, do you have any ideas or what is I I understand that it's current like, in in the slideshow and as I've tried to strengthen the the language to the abutters, whether it be business or residential, that if they're at a curb cut.

Now there's also the challenge that we know that sometimes that's where the plow you know, that's where these kind of heavier mounds of snow end up down the ends of the streets. But but what I said at the meeting, I meant in terms of, like, you know, I know it's a short period of time. I know it's really difficult to put snow and figure out where to put it and but I feel like if somebody can't see and they use a white cane, like, can we, you know, get to the level of care and the level of, you know, effort to make sure that somebody could safely traverse, you know, to to some degree of reasonable degree, through the city without being able to, you know, see or or being in a wheelchair. I know that that seems like it seems like a it shouldn't be a big a lofty goal, but it it may seem like it. But that's really been the you know, not only from the advocates and everybody.

I mean, we recognize and and like I said myself, I I tried to really firm this up after last year. I don't know how we get the message to people. I don't I mean, technically, the reason why I wanted to firm it up is because, technically, they could be ticketed, based on our policies, but we don't really enforce that one. So, I guess, do you have any ideas on how we can ensure that those ramps are clear?

I I I am gonna have to go back to the presentation and say it really is an enforcement issue. And

I see liaison Red Redassi has her hand up. She's must be dying to speak here. What's going on?

Thank you, mister chair. I just wanted to jump in and make sure that Eric wasn't put in terms of commissioner Weisman wasn't put in an awkward spot here. As he was already saying, this is more of an enforcement issue. So I've been taking notes throughout this meeting. Seems like there's a couple follow ups for mayor's office and for ISD, so I'm happy to follow through on those.

Yeah. And and the thing is, I don't mean to put on the spot, but I mean, if he if if, you know, commissioner Weissman was to come up with some sort of idea that, you know, that may that may be more more I don't like, the bottom line is is that I see you.

Try Heated ramps. Hear me out. Heated ramps and crosswalks. Yeah. I mean, if that would times to Brian, you know, Brian

posted But that's but that's what I'm saying. Like like, you know, even if it's even if it's something, like, even I say, like, about pricing out doing all the sidewalks. Right? Like, getting a you know, jumping on a truck, getting any of whatever. Like

So so, like, yeah, I I doing all the sidewalks is it would be, like Massive. It's just, like, it's really difficult to wrap my head around, like, the like, what that would look like. And and, like, I feel like we've we've basically abandoned the idea of, like, a law was passed that people are responsible for clearing their sidewalks, and we haven't really born that out. Like, you know, really tried to make that work and then have said, okay. Well, they're just throwing our hands up and say, this isn't this isn't possible. Yeah. So yeah. That's I agree.

That's what that's what I but that's what I mean even to the point where we're compromising on people, like, people's safety as far as the ramps go. So this isn't to put you on the spot, and I agree completely with liaison Radasi is that this is about communication from the city, like, whoever that is, from the administration. And and it and it like, it will take a real public education campaign to get people to understand that, you know, while it may stink that, like, you may have a like, you may be on a corner and you have a little bit more, you know, like, some heavier snow, we have to all pitch in. Somebody has to do it, or we have to do it as a city. That's all I'm saying is, like, I'm just trying to come come to a come to a solution that will get us where we need to be, which is, like you know, it's pretty bad one.

I mean, I've seen some pretty bad curb cuts, you know, covered with snow. And so like I said, sometimes it isn't it is a matter of, like, our plows have maybe dropped it there. And I just I don't know. I don't I don't know what you know? And I know it's for a short period of time every year, but, I mean, snow can sometimes last.

We were lucky this time. It melted pretty quick. But snow can sometimes last for a long time. And, you know, I'm glad to even hear you the the MBTA stops are on us because I just remember that winter in, like, 2017 or '18 when the bus stops were, like, a sheet of ice for up on Winter Hill in front of, like, the brewery there for a lot like, weeks, like, weeks and and weeks. So, I always because I think the city at that point was saying that that's on the MBTA somehow. I don't know

if they

were gonna come out. But so it's always a little bit of the shifting. But all in all, amazing job. I don't even know how you logistically do it. Like I say to myself, like you said, like, with the contractors. Right? I mean, the world's their oyster when it's snow. Like, how do we how are we even able to secure? How many people are out there with trucks that are willing I know it's good money, but I'm just saying, but that are able to do this when every city is probably fighting for the same pool of of of of drivers. So, you know, understanding not wanna upset anybody, but also, you know, don't wanna upset our constituency either.

So but great job, Eric. You know, commissioner, interim commissioner Weissman. And then one thing I wanted to say that was kinda funny was, you know, it shows your approach. The approach of DPW in general was, you go, yeah. There's something about the community path because we've had it for a few years, and you go, yeah. There was one storm when we lost the path. It was on it's almost like in the turns of war where we're like, like, like, we lost the path to that storm for a little while, but then, you know, we regrouped got it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I I get it. This is it's it's it's pretty amazing in, the undertaking that you all do. Alright. Any last thoughts from colleagues? Alright. Let's hope this is the last we're even just saying the s word, except for the next meeting when I do this report. But, yeah, seriously, we did have that April 1 storm. So great stuff. Great presentation. Thank you very much for doing this. Thank you all, clerk, mister clerk.

Just so you understand what what's happening. Are we item one, we took care of. Two, three, four, six, eight, and nine are were complete. Items five and seven, we'll keep in committee. And we don't have anything to vote on except for adjournment. So with that, councilor Hart moves to adjourn. Mister Clerk, if you don't have any questions about the agenda, roll call, please.

Thank you, mister chair. On adjournment, councilor Scott. Yes, please. Councilor Hart?

Yes.

Chair Klingen?

Yes. Good night, everybody. Thank you.

This committee is adjourned.