Snow Season Preparation Underway

Although the weather has been unseasonably warm, the City of Everett has completed its snow removal and emergency preparations for the winter season and is ready for the snow and cold weather when it arrives. Over the past few months, the Mayor has met with his senior staff to ensure that the procedures, staffing, and supplies for snow removal and parking enforcement are in place.

Mayor Carlo DeMaria said, “Preparation for winter goes far beyond just snow removal, just about every department must work together to ensure quick progress when storms roll in. Our residents, businesses, schools, and emergency personal rely on these critical city services to ensure they are able to get back to their regular schedules as quickly as possible”.

For this season, the City purchased 13 new vehicles equipped for snow plowing to more effectively and efficiently remove snow and reduce clean-up costs. The additional equipment, include a six-wheel plow and salter, a one ton F450 dump, a new front end loader, two new backhoes, a new sidewalk plow, two new salters for the one tons, and 10 wheeler plow and salter and an additional rented sidewalk plow.

Jerry Navarra, Director of DPW said “I want to thank Mayor DeMaria and the City Council for having the foresight providing the funding to allow us to purchase these new vehicles for snow removal. This new equipment will allow us do more work in-house, reducing the overall cost of our snow removal operations”.

 In addition to the new equipment, the City has also increased the number of outside contractors and equipment available for snow emergencies. Last year, the City had 16 contractors on call, with a total of 28 pieces of snow removal equipment. For the 2015-2016 season, the City increased the number to 20 outside contractors with 42 snow plowing vehicles. The additional equipment will give the City much greater flexibility to efficiently target the equipment when and where it is most needed.

City Services has also stockpiled over 1,000 tons of salt for roads and sidewalks, tested and prepped trucks and snow plows, and coordinated snow removal route plans.  The City Services mechanics have oiled, greased, and tested the 30 plows and 17 salters, including two new Ford F-350s with plow and salter. The four Bobcat and sidewalk plow and sanders, used for main thoroughfares, squares, and municipal parking lots, have also been tested and prepped.

The Police, Parking, and Communications Department have reaffirmed their strategy for notifying residents of parking bans.  Parking bans and restrictions will be implemented and enforced ahead of storms to ensure that cars have been removed before the snowfall so that plows can properly remove snow from streets.  Once the decision has been made to declare a snow emergency, the information will be made available to residents through robo phone calls, postings on ECTV, and by the activation of the blue emergency lights along main arteries.

For this snow season, December 2015 – March/April of 2016, the year used for parking bans will be 2016 – an even numbered year – thus vehicles should park on the EVEN side of the street.  This would apply for the entire snow season.  As always, there is no parking permitted on main arteries during a parking ban.

Main arteries include:

Chelsea, Hancock, Nichols, Norwood, Lawrence, Bellrock, Broadway, Main, Elm, Ferry, Bucknam, High, Garland, Alpine.

Failure to follow parking ban and snow emergency regulations will result in the ticketing and towing of vehicles.

The Mayor and his administration ask that all residents help the City achieve a successful snow removal season by following these regulations, and thank everyone in advance for their cooperation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *