"Overworked and over budget", City struggles to maintain roads

[BDP]

AFTERMATH OF THE STORM

By Bryan Dean and Augie Frost
Staff Writers

Overworked and over budget, Oklahoma City road crews struggled Monday to clear the snow routes before thousands of area residents return to work today from a holiday weekend.

Mike DeGiacomo, who heads the street maintenance division, said he's already spent double his $100,000 budget on salt after the second major storm of the season. He estimated crews have put 6,000 tons of salt on city streets since the storm hit Friday.

The city's bottom line also took a hit from manpower costs. As many as 100 workers have operated 25 to 30 salt trucks in 12-hour shifts nonstop during the icy weather, DeGiacomo said. They were paid overtime for working the weekend and extra pay for working Monday, which was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a paid holiday for city employees.

DeGiacomo put the city's cost of responding to the weather at more than $150,000 so far. That cost will go up overnight as crews continue to clear emergency routes. DeGiacomo said only about half the snow routes were plowed by noon Monday.

"We hope to have all of that plowing completed by rush hour in the morning,” DeGiacomo said. "We'll probably have to put some more salt out tonight. With the sunshine, you'll have snow and ice turning to water, and you'll have that refreeze effect.”

I find it a little distressing that Oklahoma City does not have the resources to deal with these weather events better. I'd like to see the economic impact of not having these roads cleared and just using this "stay at home" plan. Our company is not very big, but I can certainly say that it has cost us 10s of thousands of dollars in lost sales. In fact, I could probably get close to the 100k "salt" budget alone if I did some creative accounting.

I know these events don't happen multiple times every year for us, but it seems that there is at least one "stay at home" event every year. I don't know if the budget discussed in the article is fiscal or calendar based, but either way it seems pretty ridiculous that we'd be over budget just on this event, especially considering that the response was pretty weak.

I don't know, but if Oklahoma City wants to be a major economic player, it can't just shut down every time we get some winter weather. Now if this was entirely a product of the severity of the storm, I'd understand, but it clearly is not. This is 100% an issue of not committing the resources to deal with the events that we do have.

[MadMonk]

http://www.okctalk.com/current-event...intenance.html

Keith recently posted that the City crews had 15,000 tons of salt in storage. How are we over budget with only using 6,000 tons?

[venture]

I have to say, and this is the northerner in me...the way this city deals with winter weather is a freaking laughing joke. I have never seen a more pathetic plan of action put forth by ODOT and the local municipalities than I have with these two events. Both times...

1) Salt was not put down PRIOR to the event starting. You would be amazed how much of this nightmare could be avoided if they were proactive and put salt or a liquid deicer down like most cities up north.

2) Use the plows. When the ice and snow is slushy...get it off the road before it refreezes. The longer you leave it on, the more black ice you are going to get from the daily melt.

3) There is no excuse for ANY Interstate to still have ice and snow on it, 2 days after an event the scale we had...especially in a major city. Seeing the mess on I-240 and 44 this morning was a joke.

This weekend's coming snow just has me scared on what is going to happen. The cities apparently can't maintain their main roads, and best of luck to those that don't live on a "snow" route. Until it gets into the 40s, you'll be sliding you way around your neighborhoods.

Just simply pathetic. Cost of doing business. When large companies such as Dell have to shut down their operations for several days because this city can't think ahead, it is a bad image that will be portrayed to any other major business wanting to come here. A city should not shut down for a couple inches of sleet and ice. Yes it was bad, but a proactive plan and not a "well we'll let it fall and throw sand on it later" plan...would have been much better.

I can't begin to count the number of times i've seen snow plows going down the roads doing absolutely nothing positive. They obviously need to train their drivers better. Also...what is this with a city the size of OKC and only a couple dozen plows? Cities like New York and such throw plows on their garbage trucks...we should at least do the same. A city that is 600 sq miles...should have more trucks than cities 1/7th their size. However, pick out some cities up north that are much smaller and they'll have two to three times more plows and salt trucks. They also have invested in a couple deicer units to spray the roads down before events. Keep in mind, we probably get many more ice storms where we are than to the north.

I just hope they are smart and salt the roads before the snow starts falling Saturday...or a lot of people are gonna have Monday off if we get the full 3-6 inches of snow.

[lika do da chacha]

Bricktown lost a ton of money the last few days; heads should roll for this incompetence. -Including the jokers at the County level. -Oklahoma County that is.
Ive been driving a "snow route" to work in Bricktown the last few days, and it still sucks.

[jbrown84]

When large companies such as Dell have to shut down their operations for several days because this city can't think ahead, it is a bad image that will be portrayed to any other major business wanting to come here. A city should not shut down for a couple inches of sleet and ice. Yes it was bad, but a proactive plan and not a "well we'll let it fall and throw sand on it later" plan...would have been much better.

Why should Dell have to shut down? I've had to come into work every day this week.

[BDP]

Yeah, but what was the attendance on the days you went in, percentage wise? I went to work every day but Sunday and we were open for businesses, but we had less than 50% attendance and were so slow that it almost wasn't worth it. But you can't just close down every time there's a bit of snow or ice. It's not as if this is Phoenix or that this has never happened before.

I think venture made the best points, so I won't reiterate them all. But the thing that upsets me the most is that I get the feeling that the people in charge think there is absolutely nothing wrong with what they are doing. We get 1-4 inches of winter weather and they literally tell people "just stay home". That's their plan. The weather men go on TV before the event even happens and declare that "we're just going to shut this place down for a few days". It's ridiculous and shouldn't be tolerated, imo.

No doubt that keeping the city open pays for itself in terms of sales tax revenue from people actually being able to be open and do businesses, state income tax from people actually being able to work, and from eliminating a barrier to growth. No one wants to locate in a city where their employees are simply told to stay home and given no realistic choice to go to work because the city has no adequate plan to deal with relatively small winter events. I agree that our large land mass makes it more expensive per capita to keep the city open, but, hey, that's just another cost we need to be prepared to pay for our sprawling nature. It's just common sense that miles and miles of infrastructure spread out over fewer and fewer people is going to be less efficient, but if that's what the city wants it needs to figure out a way to make it work. There's certainly nothing efficient about shutting it all down.

[jbrown84]

Well I can tell you that, although we haven't usually been right on time in the mornings, we have had 100% of our employees here every day this week.

[traxx]

Venture, you make some good points, but why should we compare how many salt trucks, plows etc. we have to cities and smaller towns up North? This kind of thing happens once maybe twice a winter here. To have the same kind of hardware as say Detriot would be a waste of resources. We would have people complaining about their tax money going to buy trucks that sit unused 50 weeks out of the year.

And as far as being proactive, it makes good sense for a northern city that sees this kind of weather quite often. But for us to spread salt before the storm is a gamble in this climate considering that we don't stockpile the amount of salt a northern city does. If the weather men predicted an ice storm, we put down salt before hand and then it doesn't show up, then people would be up in arms that we wasted that.

I think your #2 point is good. Those are the kinds of things we need to work on. Not throwing more money at it or more resources but working smarter. I think that would make a huge difference.

Being in a moderate climate, businesses have to worry about this kind of thing far less than companies in the northern part of the country.

Cities spend money where it is needed. In the North that's dealing with snow and ice. It would be ridiculous to bash Buffalo, NY because they don't have the kind of tornado warning system and monitering system that we have in place in this state. It would mostly go unused. Same goes for us concerning snow and ice.

Give OKC some credit. I'm not saying we can't and shouldn't do better, but expecting the same out of OKC metro as you would from Buffalor, NY isn't fair.

[BDP]

This kind of thing happens once maybe twice a winter here.

Right and we clearly are not prepared for even that. That's the point. We are not talking about anamolies here. We are not prepared for the weather we do have and it is a really big negative to living here. I guess, basically, Oklahoma City isn't as big of a player or important enough to keep it open.

People who say that spending tax money to keep the city open is just wasting money have no real sense of the impact. Again, it pays for itself. The money the city earns on the days it is open will more than offset the cost of keeping it open and the revenue lost by shutting it down. All these half-assed efforts do is spend money, while receieving no real benefit.

It's hard to give the city credit when it comes to infrastructure planning and execution, honestly. This is just where it is the most immediately noticeable.

[traxx]

BDP, I think you and I are on the same page more than we realize. I'm not saying that it's not worth it to keep the city open but what I am saying is that is what alot of people will say. I, like you, think we should be prepared for the weather we do have, not for the weather of Milwaukee et. al as Venture alluded to.

As for being a big player, I think we are a big player in the weather we got alot of and that's tornados. We are at the forefront as far as that's concerned - we have plenty of proactive ability as well as the knowledge and expereince of what to do once one or many have struck. I think we're so used that level of preparedness that it goes without much notice. But if you're in a tornado in a state that hardly has any and you get little to no warning and then after the event utility and rescue crews don't know what to do, you'll see that we're far ahead of the curve and that's because that type of weather affects us far more frequently than snow and ice.

I still maintain that Southerners (Oklahomans) are better at driving in icey conditions than Northerners because up there they are clearing it off as it hits the ground and thus really don't have to drive on it. This is evidenced by one of my bosses from the North who, when it was snowing and sleeting one day, said that stupid Oklahomans don't know how to drive in that kind of weather. He promptly went to run some errands and ran into other cars not once but twice in a twenty minute span.

[jbrown84]

I'm not sure the cost of stocking up on 4 dozen snowplows is going to be offset by the extra sales tax from 3 or 4 days a year that would otherwise have been "shut down". I'm not sure if we're even as shut down as you think. I've been out to eat at least twice since this hit (Texas Roadhouse and Pei Wei) and both places were packed. And as I said before, I'm sure not getting out of any work days.

[metro]

Keep in mind for all you "northerners" that you probably aren't near as prepared for a tornado as Oklahoma is. Tornadoes are our common worst problem and we're more accurately prepared, just like ice isn't that popular here so we're not as prepared.

[BDP]

As for being a big player, I think we are a big player in the weather we got alot of and that's tornados.

I meant a big player in terms of business. I think our recent display of weather response indicates that you shouldn't expect your business to be open throughout the winter in Oklahoma City, because the city doesn't expect to be open and has no problem just shutting down.

We are at the forefront as far as that's concerned - we have plenty of proactive ability as well as the knowledge and expereince of what to do once one or many have struck.

I see what you mean in terms of preparing for what's expected. But even in the tornado comparison there are differences. While we may only have one or two storms a year that force city wide closures due to impassable and unsafe roads, that never happens due to tornadoes. While a select few businesses may be affected catastrophically by a tornado, our current weather plan shuts down access to business almost universally for up to several days. Chances are good that my company will never lose business directly from any tornado event (and we came close on May 3), but it is assured, especially given our current weather planning, that we and almost every other OKC located business, will suffer losses in sales and productivity an average of 1 or 2 times a year due to impassable roads not cleared by the city for several days after a winter storm.

We were lucky that this last one came on a long weekend, too. If that was Mon-Thur, instead of Friday-MLK day, the losses would have been greater.

[BDP]

I'm not sure the cost of stocking up on 4 dozen snowplows is going to be offset by the extra sales tax from 3 or 4 days a year that would otherwise have been "shut down". I'm not sure if we're even as shut down as you think.

What!?

OK. My company has a store that is located on the corner of two designated snow routes. That store was projected to do roughly 100k in business against last years sales over the course of the days of the storm. Less than half of its employees showed up. It did a grand total of 10k dollars and it was open the entire time. At 8.375%, that's a loss in $7537 in sales tax revenue lost for the city. That's 1 store. We have more. Same story. Multiply that by all the stores in the city. Clearly, keeping the city open by keeping the roads open pays for itself. When you exceed the salt budget by 100% with one event and you've only cleared half of the designated routes, that's just bad planning and poor execution.

And we certainly lost A LOT more money in lost sales than we saved on taxes not collected for winter storm preparedness and response. That's for sure. You amortize the total cost of keeping the city open across all tax payers and compare it to lost wages and revenue by shutting it down and it's easy to see that everyone lost a lot more over the last few days (and, again, even more if during the regular work week) than they saved on taxes.

It matters not whether you were open, like say your Pei Wei or Texas Roadhouse, the city plan was to stay home and, of course, most people (aka customers) did, because many can't get out and they're plastering closing all over the news.

Again, I was out every day of this storm and went to work all but Sunday. The city was shut down and the roads were not cleared. I'm not making this up or blowing it our of proportion. But, I guess I will just continue to expect less of the city and bear it and just forecast weather losses into every year's budget.

[Karried]

On a side note.. regardless of the cleared snow routes and major streets being cleared.. I can't even get out of my driveway and out of my neighborhood without slipping and sliding - the streets are so slick and icy..

I've been watching cars slide around my court all week long and I'm not willing to risk it ( I don't think it really matters if you know how to drive in the ice or not.. when you step on the brake and keep going.. you don't need skill at that point.. you need to be able to stop! and on ice.. not going to happen) .. luckily I have electricity and work out of my home. I've been doing taxes online all week so it hasn't affected our business but DH went out yesterday and today to go to work .. I guess every individual employer has to make that call.. I feel badly for people who really need to get to work and can't or people who can't afford to miss all these days without pay.

From the looks of closings.. we may have another snow day tomorrow! yikes..

I think we need to get a better action plan for severe winter weather. We've shown we can address the tornadoes so it shouldn't be too difficult to have some improvement for the cold weather.

[Patrick]

Why should Dell have to shut down? I've had to come into work every day this week.

Me too! Why do we close everything every time there's a little ice and snow on the roads? Come on folks! It's Wednesday now! The Roads are NOT that bad.

[Patrick]

Back on topic, the city needs to plan for these things. Every year I hear how they're over budget on money to clear the roads. Pathetic! Why don't they fit things like this into the budget. It's called a "Rainy Day Fund."

[traxx]

BDP, I can see your frustration but I don't think OKC buying 36 more plow trucks and/or salt trucks is the answer. The metro "shuts down" because of this type of weather for 4 days or so a year. Yes, we've had two ice storms that have crippled transportation this winter, but I think most Oklahomans will agree that's not typical. Getting those extra trucks is a huge outlay of money to improve roads for only 1-2% of the entire year.

You're obviously a business person, so I'll put it in business terms to make my point. We need to operate this like businesses do with Just In Time practices. You don't want a warehouse full of product because that wastes money with storage costs and surpluses. You don't want to fall short of demand either because that's lost money. We need to do that with our winter preparedness. We should try to meet our demand for preparedness as precisely as possible. We don't want a bunch trucks sitting around useless for most of the year just so we can have excellent road conditions for those few days we do have snow or ice. That's not a wise use of money.

Again, I think we can do better but it's not by buying more trucks and salt. It's in the execution. I think we have the means we're just not executing it well.

[jbrown84]

That store was projected to do roughly 100k in business against last years sales over the course of the days of the storm. Less than half of its employees showed up.

Um, like I said, I've gone in to work every day this week and I didn't have a choice. Why were 50% of your employees allowed to stay home the entire day?? Like Karried said, it's neighborhood roads that are really bad and seem to get worse every day as it keeps refreezing every night. The interstates and all the major city streets I've been on have been fine as long as your not driving like a maniac.

And the problems we are having right now are NOT the norm. When was the last time it snowed, turned to solid ice, and stayed freezing cold for over a week? Not in my lifetime. Yeah it snows a couple of times a year, but it always melts after a day or two. So, IMO, this is not normal winter weather, and we're not as shut down as you seem to think. Like I said, we had 100% of employees at my workplace, and we work with many clients and vendors and they are all working as well, so maybe your employer needs to be less lenient about letting people stay home because they are afraid they might slip on the ice on their front porch.

[Keith]

Just like jbrown, I have had to work everyday this week, except for Sunday. I work for the OKC Water Dept. in emergency services, so I had no choice but to go to work. I have been driving these streets all week long, so I know what kind of shape they are in.

I am very dissappointed in our street dept. They knew that this bad storm was coming, yet they still weren't prepared. Their crews have been working 12 hour shifts, but I don't see where they have done that much good.

The snow routes are still not cleared. The ones that they did clear, they only cleared two lanes. Now, they say they have gone way over budget. Whose fault is that? The Management. In my opinion, the upper management did not plan this very well, and now they are paying the consequences....and so are we as taxpayers. I wonder if they even know where their snow routes are.

I expect the neighborhood streets to still be slick, but not the major streets or the highways. Each day this week, I have been driving to different parts of the city. Not once have I gotten stuck. I'm not a great driver, but I am a careful and safe driver. I have had a few problems getting out of my driveway, but after four days of doing this, I am getting the hang of it.

Today, I noticed some motorists getting out for the first time since the weekend. The way I could tell was that they were going much slower than the rest of the traffic (rolling road blocks), and their vehicles were clean. My truck is so dirty, I can barely see out of my windows....I may have to wash it tomorrow.

Tomorrow is another snow day for the kiddos. My daughter will be happy, and I will go to work as usual. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail, nor snow, nor freezing rain, will keep me from going to work. After almost 16 years of doing this, I haven't missed a day because of the weather.

I love a challenge!

[venture]

Just a quick comment before heading to bed. Will reply more tomorrow.

The comparrision between OKC and the tornadoes and elsewhere don't have a lot of basis. Over the last few years Oklahoma has really seen a decrease in tornado activity (though I expect that to change this year), which other areas have been impacted much more severely. Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Missouri have seen significantly more tornadic activity than here. Heck Buffalo does get many severe events during the summer, especially those nice storms rolling right off the lake.

Yes a lot of technology has helped OKC prepare for the tornadoes...but don't think that gives us an advantage. Where I lived in the midwest earlier...we had a lot variations to the weather. The last year I lived there...summer was in the 100s for several days, winter came early in october, November saw a decent tornado outbreak including an F4...and a F1 that missed my house by a 1/4 mile, then the winter finished off with over 50 inches of snow - the most they had seen in 30 years.

My whole point...yes our resources are limited...but common sense folks.

When a storm is coming in and it is a sure thing, temp in the morning is in the upper 20s already and rain is moving it...its going to freeze. Get the salt down.

Next get the slush off the roads after the storms leaves.

Finally continue to check up on the main areas to keep black ice threats away and start getting relief to the residential areas.

Enough with the excuses that OKC only gets these one or twice a year. Guess what...#3 is coming with up to 8-12" of the white stuff. I've lived here for about 8 years or so now...and there are usually always a few winter events here, and it is the same result.

I just get annoyed by these moronic people on the news and radio talking about how "great of a job the road crews did in cleaning it up". They failed. Simple as that. Now regroup and replan...and do it right this weekend. This is gonna be different, a snow event. Focus on keeping one lane clear on all the major roads...salt that one lane...once it is done, then worry about other lanes and secondary streets.

[traxx]

Venture, I agree. Our planning needs to be better. But others have suggested a huge outlay of money to get more equipment to handle this kind of weather. We just need to do better with what we have.

And as for being shut down, I see on the news at least once a winter a Northern city being shut down because of winter weather. Some on this board would have us think that cities and towns above the Mason-Dixon Line are immune to being shut down from winter weather. Not true. Weather will affect business at some point during the year no matter where you move and some of it can be helped and some can't.

[Keith]

Since we have 5-10" of snow coming tonight and tomorrow, we will see if the street dept. learned from their mistakes. We will see just how well they get the main streets cleared off.

[jbrown84]

Looks like this second wave of snow was all hype.

[Keith]

Looks like this second wave of snow was all hype.

That's for sure. I left work at 11 PM tonight and didn't have to scrape anything off my windshield, nor did I have a problem driving home. The worst part was trying to pull into my driveway.

All three TV stations were wrong.