Results tagged “plowing”

For once, the City of Chicago failed to find a taker in a bid to privatize a city service and, as a result will be paying overtime to plow drivers this coming winter. We've already heard promises of preparation but this new call came from Mayor Daley himself at a press conference earlier today. Still smarting from last year's attempt to cut costs by skimping on side-street plowing and scaling back on overtime pay, Daley promised the streets would cleared efficiently this coming winter: "You have to do an effective job on the major streets and get to the side streets as fast as possible."

Swamped by citizen complaints, cranky aldermen, and a whole lot of snow, Mayor Daley has finally relented and put the city back on its regular snow plow plan. His controversial plan to cut back on side street plowing and avoid overtime pay proved quite unpopular as it made driving hazardous and dangerous all over the city.

"Unfortunately, it didn't work out very well," Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Michael Picardi told aldermen at a Tuesday hearing on the subject. "Now that we are in the extreme winter months of January and February, we know that we are going to have to plow and spread salt as we always have and as we did last year. So, we should expect then a significant increase in service on side streets in future snows."

Ald. Ray Suarez (31st) told Picardi, "The calls I've been getting have not been nice, and the language they have been using has not been nice. The residents of Chicago expect the streets to be salted, and when they are not salted, they can cost an election. And you are starting to get back into the groove, and that's what we want to see." The cutback was an effort to save money on overtime as snowy winters the past few years cost the city $30 million in 2007 and $33.7 million in 2008 (including $8 million just in December). Ald. Tom Allen (36th) one of the most vocal critics of Daley's plan, said, "This was public safety, and we screwed up bad. I'm not criticizing the attempt to make a change, but the attempt was a big flop, and now we are back to reality."

At this morning's City Council meeting, concerned aldermen will get to address their complaints about the city's snow plowing (or lack thereof) to the Mayor's aides in charge of snow removal. Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Michael Picardi and Transportation Commissioner Thomas Byrne will face the Council's Transportation Committee, which is headed by Ald. Tom Allen (36th), the most vocal critic of the Mayor's new snow removal plan that abandoned side-street plowing to (allegedly) save money. However, Allen is back-pedaling now, saying the issue “has kind of become a moot issue since the experiment failed and they’re back to a common-sense approach. They’ve returned back to normal snow removal.”