Charlie Breitrose A truck plows a Watertown street.
Dozens of Watertown Department of Public Works crews and contractors plowed 20 inches of snow off Watertown’s 72 miles of roadway, after the snowstorm that hit the City on Jan. 25 and 26, City Manager George Proakis said. The City also issued 69 parking tickets and 50 warnings and fines for failing to shovel sidewalks.
Proakis provided the City Council with a report of the response to the biggest snowstorm to hit Watertown in several years.
The snow emergency began at noon on Sunday, Jan. 25, and the DPW began salting roadways at 11 a.m. that day. By 1 p.m., the DPW started plowing, and contractors arrived between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. They tackled the 21 routes around Watertown, starting with main roads, followed by throughways and side streets. Plowing continued on Monday, Jan. 26.
On Tuesday, Jan. 27, the focus was getting the Watertown Public Schools open after two snow days. Snow was removed from parking lots, sidewalks in the areas of bus stops, and school routes. Work continued through Saturday, Jan. 31.
Proakis shared some of the statistics from the storm.
“We have 72 miles of roadway to clear, 20 miles of sidewalk, 846 tons of salt were used on our roadways, and approximately 30,000 cubic yards of snow were moved to the holding yard,” Proakis said. “That’s the equivalent, if you started burying football fields with one foot of snow, that’s the equivalent of about 11 football fields at a foot deep that were moved to those areas between Sunday the 25th and Saturday the 31st.”
The snow is being stored on the parking lot off Manley Way, next to Walker Pond, Proakis said.
He added: “The DPW staff totaled 1,454 hours of time responding and clearing snow from the storm. Our contractors dedicated 1,992 hours in the first week of the storm response and cleanup. We deployed a total of 43 vehicles on the roads throughout the storm.”
The Winter Parking Ban rules, prohibiting cars from parking on City streets overnight, helped during the storm cleanup. The City now issues tickets for $100 for not removing a vehicle during a snow emergency.
“During the declared snow emergency, our Police Department worked to clear the roads of cars not removed from the street. They issued 69 tickets for violating the snow emergency parking ban. Those were at the new higher $100 rate for snow emergency tickets,” Proakis said. “We towed 27 vehicles. There were a lot of other circumstances where we pulled a tow truck up behind a vehicle, and soon after doing that, found that the owner mysteriously appeared from their front door, rushed out and moved to her car.”
The Watertown Police Department had officers working 25 hours of overtime to enforce the parking ban, and the DPW paid officers to do details for 20 hours to help move vehicles off the roads.
The recently approved residential snow ordinance requires snow to be removed from the sidewalks in front of homes in Watertown, as had been previously required for commercial properties. The City received reports about 364 addresses, both residential and commercial properties, about violations of the snow removal ordinance.
“To date, they’ve issued 50 warnings or fines this season, and I know they’re going back and doing a second pass through every place that had a warning issued, and if they haven’t still cleaned it since we gave them the warning, we have a position where we can give them the fine,” Proakis said.
Enforcement of the residential snow ordinance is a learning process, Proakis said, and the City is not just ticketing every violation. The City’s Code Enforcement officers are not driving around looking for violations, they respond to complaints sent into the City, mostly through the 311 system.
“We have a small Code Enforcement team. As you know, there’s a limited number of hours they have to do this, and they’re also doing a whole bunch of other things right now,” Proakis said. “I will share, the team has not been issuing violations to properties that they deem to be making a reasonable effort at clearing snow.”
Some lenience has been given to residents to the requirement in the Residential Snow & Ice Removal Ordinance for removing a 42-inch wide path on the sidewalk, or shoveling a path all in some circumstances.
“There’s two challenges with this storm. One is, we have that rule of the width you can clear. If you tried to clear it, you can’t quite get there, we’re not going to issue a ticket in that circumstance right now,” Proakis said. “The other thing is, in areas where we have sidewalks right up against streets, and sometimes (the City’s plows) plow so close to the curb and put a six foot snow bank on top of the sidewalk. And I can’t necessarily tell someone to clean a six foot snow bank that our plow put there, just quite the way I can tell them to clear up the 20 inches of snow that naturally fell on their sidewalk.”
Proakis also talked about the Winter Parking Ban, which is scheduled to end on Feb. 28. He said that may not be possible.
“We’re going to assess very carefully what the weather looks like over the course of the next two weeks. If the snow banks are remaining at the size that they are right now, my recommendation is going to be extending the overnight parking ban into the month of March, because we are still benefiting from having the cars off the street on those overnights for emergency vehicle access, for snow removal purposes, for just addressing the ability to get around the city,” Proakis said. “Once a car sits and stays in the same spot for days on end, and especially if we have another snowstorm on top of it, it could be a challenge.”