|
Local government officials in the Washington area are lucky that Election Day doesn’t fall in February. In the District of Columbia and its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, citizens are upset about municipal failures to plow streets adequately and to maintain regular school schedules. But there is one traditional responsibility of local government where the recent progress is nothing short of astounding. First, the bad news: “Snowcrete” is the treacherous ice that results when rain, imprecise or nonexistent plowing and insufficient salting turn what was once fluffy white snow into a dense and dirty scourge. Local residents have had enough of it. Ava Hoelscher reported for Washingtonian magazine on Friday: Tired of waiting for city plows to reach their snowcrete-clogged streets, some DC-area residents are taking matters into their own hands, hiring private companies to deal with public streets that haven’t been effectively cleared by the city’s trucks. One Chevy Chase DC resident, Cindy Sherman, sent a proposal to her neighbors to band together and pay for a private plow company, which she says ended up costing $1,500. “Twenty-four people, including our
family, all decided they wanted to do it,” she says. “It ended up being only $62.50 per person, so that was really manageable.” The plow arrived around 8 PM on Monday and cleared the block in about two hours, according to Sherman. She requested the service Monday afternoon after realizing that she and many other residents in her neighborhood couldn’t get to work, go to doctor’s appointments, see their grandkids, or buy groceries… Sherman decided to enlist a private, word-of-mouth-only service operated by Lee Stillwell and Nick Carone. Carone says they don’t often see streets
as unplowed as they currently are after last weekend’s storm. “Usually it’s a lot better than this,” says Carone. “The rain didn’t help because it created a hard crust on top, but for a normal plow, that shouldn’t really affect it. But there are a lot of streets still not plowed.”
|
