George,

I write this as the slush on Water Street is beginning to freeze into an impenetrable mess.

Growing up in Rhode Island, I've always thought of the guys who drive the snow plows as a heroic bunch -- they work long hours, away from their families, in dangerous conditions, so the rest of us can get to school or work safely, and on time. As a kid, I always wanted to ride with them as they cleared the road, because it seemed like the coolest job in the world.

It's too bad that in Charlottesville, they have such incompetent leadership. They, and the citizens of Charlottesville, deserve far better.

By the time I was five years old and in first grade, I knew a little bit about getting snow off of sidewalks and streets. (In New England, shoveling the walk is one of the first chores you're assigned.) I learned about the trinity of snow removal: salt, sand, and elbow-grease. The most important of these is elbow-grease -- there's just no substitute for actually shoveling snow.

As an adult with a wider view, that translates to chemicals, abrasives, and moving snow. Many years later, there's still no substitute for actually pushing the snow off the street.

Friday, Charlottesville's Public Works Director was on TV, proclaiming that they stood ready to put salt on the roads, if a storm came. No mention of sand, which (if your locality is actually competent) gives you traction on the roads when you need it. If there was more than an inch of snow, maybe -- just maybe -- they'd plow. And at that moment, I knew that Charlottesville's leadership had decided to lose another war against the snow. Again.

Again.

Of course, if there's a lot of snow this winter and people start to get upset, this spring, the Charlottesville will write another big check to some consultant-for-hire to congratulate us on how great a job we did, and some managers will get some nice awards, or appointments, or somesuch.

Back to the instant issue. By quarter of three today, the snow and sleet had stopped falling. The temperature was about as high as it was going to be all day, high enough that the salt was still working. So, why didn't the battle shift to getting the mess off the streets?

In Charlottesville, City Hall doesn't believe in moving snow. In fact, many of the showplows ride on sleds, protecting the snow from removal. We don't move the snow, because it is cheaper for the City to simply suck at snow removal. Their strategy is to push the economic burden of bad weather to taxpaying businesses (who lose customers) and taxpaying citizens (who may not be able to get to work).

It's not fair.

The fact is that even two pickup trucks (!) with snow plows starting at 3pm could have cleared the whole of the Water Street/Main Street/University Avenue corridor in a couple of hours. Instead of freezing slush, I should have just looked at black pavement. Now six hours after the weather turned, most of the streets in Charlottesville should be clear.

It's just wrong. Keeping the streets clear in bad weather is a "Basic City Service", but from City Council to the Public Works Director, we've decided that it's not important. So, the heroic guys driving big trucks get told to go out and do a half-assed job, throwing a little salt on the roads and hoping nobody notices that they want to do better. (And when you talk to them, they DO want to do better.)

City leadership should be ashamed.

Clearing the roads when it snows isn't rocket science -- it's the kind of chemistry and physics that you learn in grade school. So, when can we expect Charlottesville actually start doing its job?

Tom McCrystal (electronic mail, January 22, 2005)