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Division's post-mortem on December's plowing problems

Speed the Plow

This week the Common Council received and filed a report by Lawrence Panaro, superintendent of streets sanitation in the City of Buffalo’s Division of Streets. Panaro’s report examines his division’s performance in clearing the snow that fell quickly and prodigiously on the city between December 19 and December 22—10.2 inches that Friday, followed by more snow and high winds all weekend long.

The failure to clear narrow residential streets that weekend was compounded by heavy snowfall over the next month, and city residents on those streets howled for explanations, flooding the Mayor’s Complaint Hotline—the vaunted 311 system—with calls.

After describing the manpower and equipment available to his division—58 plow drivers, 28 laborers, four dispatchers, seven supervisors; nine wing plows with salt spreaders, 15 hi-lifts, 36 single-blade plows with salt spreaders, four trucks that can be mounted with plows only—Panaro explains the pattern by which those resources are deployed. (The pattern’s a bit complicated: To read the whole report yourself, go to AV Daily.)

Panaro then offers an account of those four days, from the harrowing perspective of a plow driver: 1,000 illegally parked cars on the West Side alone, blizzard-like conditions that limited visibility and undid the plows’ work almost instantly.

And the there were those pesky 311 calls from citizens, conveyed to the Streets Division through the mayor’s office, which insists that city departments clear 311 complaints as quickly as it can:

One source of concern for Streets Division supervision that must be discussed is the early requests during snow events to respond to complaint calls. Streets supervision assigns personnel and equipment to work in a planned, methodical manner so they can better doirect [sic], monitor and coordinate efforts in their respective districts…It must be understood that when plowing districts and the individual runs within a district, plows must start somewhere and finish somewhere. Someone has to be first and someone has to be last…Chasing complaints for streets unplowed that come in shortly after a snow event only leads to confusion, missed streets because of patterns being broken (particularly in more difficult areas of operation), and a significant slowing down of the main process of clearing streets of snow and ice. Attempting to chase the number of 311 complaints received during this snow event was an almost insurmountable burden to overcome, particularly when most were unfounded due to the process by which the Streets Division operates under these weather conditions.

Panaro goes on to write that more aggressive parking enforcement would help city plows, as would a reconsideration of alternate parking regulations. (Check out those proposals at AV Daily, too.) He also argues that division is undermanned:

Currently, the division is budgeted for 65 plow operators…However, the current staffing level stands at 58 plow operators, seven under budget. In additions, supervision recommendations for staffing call for 75 plow operators.

His assessment contradicts the initial reaction by mayor’s staff to citizen complaints. At the time, the mayor’s office insisted staffing levels were not responsible for the division’s failure to clear side streets.

geoff kelly

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