Snowmaggedon fails to materialize

Monday
Dec. 27, 2010

Dear residents,

We have weathered our first real winter storm of the season, and it came at an ideal time.

Though the storm delivered four to six inches in many areas, we are in the midst of the Christmas holiday, and lots of people are already off of work, or could easily take a day off. This enabled our Public Works crews to get out there and hit those streets.

As of 4pm today, when I began my tour, the streets look pretty good. The reality is that Norristown has lots of narrow, one-way streets, where cars park on both sides of the street. Frankly, these narrow, one-way streets, which are jam-packed with cars are simply difficult to plow.

After last year's back-to-back blizzards -- and our less than stellar response in the mind of residents -- I directed our Public Works team to draft a new snow emergency and snow maintenance plan. The snow emergency plan calls for us to declare certain streets a snow emergency route in a major storm. Moreover, the plan calls for diverting parked cars from narrow streets to nearby parking lots, possibly at schools, county lots, and private businesses.

I realize some will consider this an inconvenience, however, it is a quality trade-off to ensure these narrow streets don't become impassible for days on end.

Norristown simply has not had an official snow emergency plan on paper, and boroughs around the state are expected to have such a plan.

I will be looking for additional input from residents in 2011. But we hope to put the plan in place and make Norristown a much safer place to park and drive during winter's worst.

Please let me know if you have any feedback or concerns.

Sincerely,

Councilman at-large Marlon Millner