First Selectman's Corner - December 19, 2019 - Winter Road Maintenance

December 19, 2019

Wow...the cold weather is here…and with it came some snow.  Most folks that know me will tell you, I really love winter and the outdoors, but I just can’t stand being COLD!!  I guess that stems from typical November/December weather when New Hartford sees a mixed bag of temperatures.  Cold and snowy one day, warm and rainy the next…  That usually leaves me wanting to pull out the heavy winter coat, but waiting until now to do it!

So with this cold snap our DPW team has been hard at work tending to the roads.  If one thinks about the “management” of this type of process, one recognizes that most winter storms will occur “off-shift” requiring a lot of late night overtime work.  It can be tough on the body – being called in late at night and not getting regular sleep, but our team does their best…with the ultimate goal of keeping all of our residents safe. 

Over the years, our snow plow routes have remained relatively the same - we typically run nine (9) routes and on occasion we bring in additional help for really big storms.  Many residents know their plow drivers by name and when I inquire about how the roads are to friends, I typically get a response like “Joe came by at 3AM”.  That’s small town living…where everyone knows your name.

While many towns around us use straight salt exclusively (which we are trying in isolated areas), our DPW team mainly uses a blend of sand and rock salt because many of our roads have steep inclines like West Hill Road (home of “Dead Man’s Curve”), Ratlum Road that accesses Ski Sundown and Holcomb Hill just to name a few.  The sand component of the mix provides “grit” that helps vehicles get traction in slippery conditions. 

During winter seasons, it has been the practice of the Town to leave sand in a “bin” by the Town Garage on Greenwoods Road and on Antolini Road (opposite the firehouse) so that residents could have some access to our sand supply to spread on slippery spots on their walkways and/or driveways.  The concept was simple – all residents could get a little sand – generally taken in a five (5) gallon bucket for home use.  Unfortunately over time other municipalities stopped using sand (and keep their salt in gated facilities), it has become obvious that many commercial snow plow operators have been visiting our sand/salt facilities to load commercial spreaders when our DPW team or police officers are not on duty.  Just last week, roughly 15 to 20 yards of sand (the equivalent of two truckloads) were cleaned out of the bin in record time. 

Sadly, it has become clear that a change in our protocol is necessary, as it was never the intent of the Town to provide this quantity of sand for this purpose – so we must return the practice to what was originally intended.  As such, concrete blocks have been placed in a perimeter around the bins to limit access to commercial vehicles.  Police have been placed on notice to monitor them to ensure that only residents are taking our sand.  Further, automated gates will be installed to limit access to the interior of our DPW facilities to secure the material that we use on our roads.  Please know that the intent of these actions is not to restrict residents’ reasonable access to some sand, we are just trying to remove the spreader component from the equation.   

As always, if you have questions about Town snow maintenance operations or Town facilities, I’m more than happy to meet with you to discuss it, or show you our facilities and explain how we operate them during storms. As always, we’ll continue to keep updates on our town website, but if you have additional questions feel free to send me a note at Town Hall @ djerram@newhartfordct.gov.    

Happy Holidays!   Dan