Dear Editor:
On Feb. 9, my car was parked on the residential side on 5th street, along with a whole slew of other cars. Major 3-4 ft icy snowdrifts were interspersed in between all the cars parked on the block. Much to my and other residents’ surprise we found out cars ticketed during during a surprise 11:00-12:00 street sweeping. When I called the environmental services, I was informed by the operator that the “supervisors” deemed it appropriate to ticket cars. He also mentioned that they wanted to use a snow plow to clear the street, though I did not see any plows doing any sort of snow removal. (A 4 ft. pile of snow remains untouched on the corner of 5th and Bloomfield St). When I asked why there had not been any signs posted to alert unsuspecting residents as to this planned snow removal, he agreed that it was not handled appropriately.
My next call was to the mayor’s office, alerting them of this failure to properly inform the public of this planned snow removal on a “street sweeping” day. The secretary said that “restrictions were reinstated on Tuesday, the day before this occurrence. When I informed her that the emergency messages that the administration sent out was only “half” recorded on my cell phone, she mentioned that she had received other phone calls regarding this problem and that a longer lead in time was needed to ensure proper delivery of their emergency calls. Clearly in both instances “one hand is not talking to the other.”
I have lived in town for 10 years and this is the first time that “street sweeping” has even been done when there were still mounds of snow piled on the road. I find this interesting because there is no possible way that the street sweeper can actually do what it is suppose to do give the ice mounds and snow piled in its path. Another waste of city resources resulting in the hassling of its unsuspecting citizens? Given the failure of the administration to properly notify residents in a timely manner (isn’t it 48 hours for the red and white signs?), I demand all of the tickets be rescinded to those who received them for this procedural faux pax carried out by our City’s Administration. In these difficult economic times, people don’t need to pay $45 for a mistake propagated by a failure to properly communicate to its law abiding, taxpaying citizens. Unless of course the city is trying to plug a budget gap with this new found source of revenue!
Respectfully,
Anthony Varriano