Photo By Una-Kariim Cross

Council hears from Daryl Brock and Diane Watkins of the Department of Public Services.

At least 55 Cincinnatians might reconsider dreaming of a white Christmas for the next few years. That's how many city employees worked 12- to 15-hour shifts around the clock to dig Cincinnati out from under 13 inches of snow and 1 to 2 inches of ice last month.

Daryl Brock, the city's director of public services, gave city council's Neighborhood and Public Services Committee a detailed presentation Jan. 6 on the city's response to what he called "about a 30-year storm."

By 10 a.m. Dec. 22, "the snow is coming down so heavy we realized this thing was getting ahead of us," he said.

The last time the city saw so much snow was in 1976 or '77, he said. Those were both years that the Ohio River froze over.

'Information deficit'
Compared to other cities of similar size that receive similar snowfall, about 25 inches per year, Cincinnati's fleet of 60 to 65 trucks is about in the middle, Brock said. However, each city driver had to plow at least 20 more lane miles than the drivers in Anderson Township, for example.

"By the time we finish 50 miles and start all over again, we've already lost a good deal of ground," Brock said.

The salt couldn't melt that much snow and ice, so it had to be removed. The city scrambled to enlist contractors, but they first tended to their regular clients.

Then even plowing proved fruitless once the temperatures dipped below zero degrees, because the plows just wouldn't pick up the snow.

"(The plow) would go down and bump right up," Brock said.

Even so, the city managed to move 70,000 tons of snow to other locations: city parks, some recreation facilities and an old impound lot. As a result, some parks have sustained substantial damage.

But the biggest impediments to snow removal were the cars parked along one or both sides of narrow residential streets. Sometimes there was only an inch between even correctly parked cars and snowplow blades, Brock said.

"And then when they were incorrectly parked, I don't even remember how many cars we hit," he said.

He quickly thought better of that angle: "I guess we don't want to go there."

Maybe the city should have told citizens to move their cars while they still could, he said. In spite of a hotline, Brock admitted there was what he called "an information deficit."

"People didn't want to hear we were there -- well, it didn't look like we were there," he said.

Callers endured long waits and then there weren't many specifics to tell them or even people to do the telling. Brock said an accountant spent most of the Christmas holiday helping field the calls and dispatch trucks.

Then, after 24 hours of daily use over two weeks, some of the city's trucks started breaking down, according to City Manager Valerie Lemmie. She and Brock said some of the city equipment is in use past its recommended cycle. The cost of new trucks rivaled those of fire trucks at $30,000 to $70,000 each, without even the snow plows, Lemmie said. Replacement money is budgeted, but it's hard to resist dipping into that pot when more immediate needs arise.

"We plan for the worst, we really do," Brock said. "We only budget for average."

The operations budget for 2004 was $961,740. Council managed to bump it up to $1.2 million for the winter of 2005 -- still short of the $1.7 million Brock estimates the storm cost the city.

'One hell of a job'
Councilwoman Laketa Cole, who chairs the committee and called the hearing, concluded that Cincinnati doesn't budget nearly enough for snow removal.

Among Cole's other recommendations was that the city open its parking lots and garages so people can get their cars out of way of snowplows. She also suggested further restricting street parking during snow emergencies, signing citizens up for e-mail snow alerts, providing downloadable maps of snow emergency routes and implementing a global positioning system (GPS) to track the progress of city vehicles.

A handful of speakers also turned out to tell city officials what they thought of their tax dollars at work.

"I wish I could say it was slow going, but it was no going," Carl Boeckman said. "After four days, one starts to run low on food."

Marie Mooney, 70, said she and her husband, 73, couldn't get any help on the cul-de-sac of Sunnyhill Drive, where they live. They finally hired somebody to help dig them out.

"You don't know how frustrating this gets," she said. "Sick people up there have medicine running out."

But not everyone came to criticize city workers.

"I'm just here to say they did one hell of a job," said Yodie Mitchell, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1543, which represents some of those city workers.

Marti Munninghoff was sick of reading letters to the editor "whining about snow removal." Her neighbors around Torrence Court in Hyde Park have chipped in money for their own snow removal since 1978, contracting with a landscape company that comes out any time there's an inch or more of snow. In 2004, 23 residents paid $70 each, she said.

Councilman David Pepper respectfully disagreed with Munninghoff's' do-it-yourself mentality.

"People who call and say, 'We pay a lot of taxes so we expect good service' -- they're right," Pepper said.

Gov. Bob Taft has declared Hamilton County one of 56 Ohio counties under a state of emergency, making some of the needier county residents eligible for disaster relief funds through the Department of Jobs and Family Services. President Bush is also directing some federal disaster funds to the area.

Next up are meetings with Hamilton County and state officials to try to coordinate the snow warning levels, "so hopefully a level three is a level three in all that it means," Brock said. Right now the city, county and state all attach different messages to their warning numbers.

The city will also start talking more seriously about integrating GPS into police, fire, water works and fleet services, as Chicago and local Miami Township have already successfully done. ©