City, county crews work to clear roads

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Nov. 29, 2001

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Andy Mack is acutely aware of how much snow accumulated in downtown Bemidji early this week.

In fact, he was reminded of it several dozen times Wednesday as people called the city streets department to complain about climbing over a snow mountain to get onto a sidewalk or about getting their vehicles stuck in an intersection.

Mack, Bemidji's assistant public works director, said he knows that residents are upset, but they're going to have to be patient as the streets department juggles an increased workload with decreased manpower.

"We are running behind," he said. "We are running about a day behind and that's quite obvious downtown."

Mack said the problem began Saturday when a wet, heavy snowfall hit the area and covered streets with a slushy mixture of water and snow. City crews were sent out on overtime to clean that mess up, but not all of it had been removed by Monday.

As the snow began falling again Monday, it fell on top of what already was clogging city streets and created an entirely new mess to clean up, Mack said. The work crews were back at it again Monday night, and they just haven't been able to keep up with the continuing snowfall.

Mack said the crews weren't on the streets cleaning Wednesday because much of the work was to be done late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. He said the department chooses to work at night because of safety and second because there's less traffic.

"The motoring public wonders where we are during the day. Well, we've already put in long hours so (the street department crew) is off," Mack said. "We don't have enough people to work all day, 24 hours a day."

Compounding the problem is that the streets department lost a position during the city's recent budget cutbacks, Mack said. So the department is cleaning the same amount of roads with less people.

"The lane miles keep increasing and the manpower keeps decreasing," he said. "The public is just going to have to be patient. We can't be everywhere at once."

Mack said street crews were scheduled to continue cleaning the downtown and Bemidji Avenue North on Wednesday night. On Thursday, he said, crews would begin to move into other sections of the city.

He said the public can help the department by adhering to the calendar parking rules posted on street signs. When the street crews do get to the residential neighborhoods they need the appropriate side of the street free of parked cars to avoid having to plow around them, he said. Plowing around cars causes snow buildup and streets don't get cleaned well.

"Everybody can help by just following the signs," he said.

County road plowing operations were running much smoother as of Wednesday afternoon, according to Maintenance Supervisor John Noehring.

He said he felt most of the county's main roads and secondary roads, as well as their contracted township roads, had been cleared by Wednesday afternoon. The department planned to begin plowing again at 4 a.m. today to clear off the snow that continued to fall Wednesday.

Noehring said county crews have been starting early every morning since Saturday to clean up the county's main two-digit roads and then the secondary three-digit roads. Crews were scheduled to plow the remaining secondary and township roads, plus give the main roads a little more care, on Wednesday.

As soon as the roads are clear and the snow stops falling, he said, the crews will be able to spread sand and salt on the slippery intersections and curves. Since both are costly, he said, it would be wasteful to throw down salt and sand that would be ineffective because of more snow.

He said if it stopped snowing Wednesday night, crews should be able to finish plowing all the county roads today.

"We've already told the guys to be back again at 4 a.m. Thursday to go at it again," he said.