Town snow removal procedures outlined

On Wednesday, October 4 Mayor Adam Estenson, Director of Public Works Basil Sorensen, and Assistant the Mayor Jim Jeunehomme held a meeting with the public and business owners to discuss and brainstorm the coming winter season's snow plowing. 

Mayor Estenson sought comments from the public by inviting them to provide suggestions to improve things and to relay their priorities and procedures. 

During the discussion, one idea suggested was to create a volunteer list for those who have equipment and are willing to help plow snow in various neighborhoods. Later in the discussion, someone brought up the idea of using the town's budget to contribute funds to that list of volunteers or even set up a reward system. Mayor Estenson said he liked the ideas but is concerned about risk and liability, but he will investigate the suggestions. 

After further discussion with the public and business owners, the Town Hall provided the following considerations for downtown snow removal. They sought to communicate to achieve desired results and said. "Every storm has its own personality, and will be handled differently. The First Priority is to get traffic through town and up the hills. The Second Priority is making sure our first responders can get from their base location to the hospital. The Third Priority begins with emergency vehicles and buses where they can get down 14th Street and continue to clear streets for school routes. Then we will work on streets with hills, Arapahoe, Mondell and Park. At any point, the processes can be altered based on the storm or other emergencies."

 The Town also provided additional comments and said, "Once the storm is completed and clean up begins, we will start with the downtown area. Getting the snow to the street without causing additional hazards is the goal. Avoid blocking crosswalks, don't push snow into the roadways. Also, they will communicate with the Public Works Director and the Town to get potential solutions. They want to try to have all vehicles off the streets in the downtown area when big storms are expected. The standard good practice when shoveling snow is to keep the gutters clear. The runoff needs to have a place to go and open gutters will help the process."

Town officials referred to colored map on page 1 of this paper for a visual representation of the different priority zones for snow removal, plowing, and sanding.