Cyclist Brendan Keegan posted this video shortly after our last snow storm..
36 hours after snow has stopped and the buffered Beacon St. bike lane in #NewtonMA is not clear. @BostonCollege snow forces vehicles to park in the bike lane. Maybe BC can chip in for some better snow removal? @MassDCR @BostonBTD lane also needs to be repainted. @BikeNewton pic.twitter.com/3u5SNoWI5q
— Brendan Keegan (@brendankeegan) February 15, 2019
For whatever reason, it seems like the snow removal budget has been greatly cut this year. Case in point: The City of Newton don’t even bother to pretreat or plow Roosevelt Road and Brandeis Road unless it’s the middle of the afternoon on a school day.
They especially dropped the ball on the Sunday January 20th storm, where lack of pretreatment/plowing followed by a flash freeze lead to a layer of ice about 1″ thick on Roosevelt Road and Brandeis Road until Wednesday. Since Roosevelt Road and Brandeis Road are two of the primary routes to Newton South High School, it made extremely difficult and treacherous travel for hundreds of NSHS students who on 1/22 and even 1/23.
If the snow removal/pretreatment budget continues to grossly neglect the primary roads leading our public schools, it will eventually result in a disaster. Think a 5-10 car crash during the Monday morning rush, a bus spinning out, or a pedestrian being struck by a cars skidding out of control.
The city has been slashing the budget since Newton North was rebuilt. Prior to 2000 the city side budget was 50%. More money was spent then to improve city services.
Since that time, the mayors, city council and school committee have allowed more money to the schools each year. Newton now spends only 37% of their budget on city side expenditures. Hence the roads and other services are neglected. We do have opulent schools however.
Not surprisingly, Colleen’s comments overlooks multiple factors, including additional revenue from overrides, new growth and annual 2 1/2 percent property tax increases. Perhaps the proportions have changed but that doesn’t translate to less total municipal spending.
I think that the city has spent appropriately this year. Plowing is never going to be perfect because the forecasting isn’t accurate. We’ve had little snow this winter and one major ice storm that virtually stopped the entire Metro-Boston region. The DPW/snow plowers work well beyond overtime during a storm – maybe a bit of patience with New England weather is in order.
The roads and the snow removal in this town are absolutely horrific. The fact that several of the roads predominately consist of asphalt patches which come up during plowing doesn’t help matters. I’m specifically referring to Washington Street and Chestnut, both need to be patched after every storm.
During the past 3″ storm there was a front end loader doing laps around West Newton, only problem was there was nothing to plow. More likely than not he’s getting paid hourly and is quite content to drive around with the plow down on completely bare pavement. He was probably more successful removing pavement patches than he was snow. Multiply this contractor by about 50 others and we’re essentially paying contractors hourly to drive around and further damage the roads.
Also the town owned sidewalk (parking lot in West Newton) which the contractor drove by 30+ times has yet to be cleared after a storm this season.
This is our tax dollars at work (or not, as the case may be). I have sympathy for the contractors that have to work for many hours at a time in poor conditions during snow storms, AND at the same time these are our taxpayer dollars: we should get our money’s worth and let the city know when the job isn’t getting done.