St. Paul presentation on winter plowing: The city activates staff up to 36 hours before a heavy snow forecast to de-ice streets. Here’s the order of operations:

Do you call the Snow Emergency line? Do you ask for cars to be tagged or towed to facilitate plowing? There’s two different phone numbers, “and that process is obsolete and it isn’t really working for people,” says Council President Brendmoen.

Here’s Brine 101:

Council Member Nelsie Yang: More people are working at home. That means more cars. Will tagging and towing change? City Staff: No, not really.

If someone calls to complain about a poorly plowed street during a snow event, good luck. Crews are super busy. After an event? Response times could be 2-8 hours, depending upon volume of calls.

Operational challenges: Staffing is getting harder. Even 10 years ago, there were more people clamoring to do these 10-12 hour shifts. Millennials and Gen Z apparently want more work-life balance. Other challenges:

Minneapolis V St. Paul. There are different approaches here. Minneapolis uses more “belly plows” with blades center truck rather than the front. Mpls takes longer (36 hrs) to clear a snow emergency. St. Paul is paid to clear county and state roads. Mpls doesn’t do as much. Sand!

St. Paul Public Works says it does not have a plowing problem. It has a parking problem. You or your neighbors don’t move your car... Here’s more on ticketing:

70 percent (!!!) of people who signed up to ticket/tag cars parked in snow routes don’t show up for work. It’s at night, it’s cold, it’s a holiday, tickets are handwritten. Only sworn officers can do electronic tickets.

If city is in a night plow or day plow phase, and someone calls for salt on a residential street, it’s not going to happen. That happens during the clean-up phase afterward. 651-266-PLOW will soon offer recorded messages on snow Emergencies in Spanish, Hmong and Somali.

St. Paul does snow emergency alerts by text message, email, it’s Winter Parking App (which will soon sunset and isn’t working well across platforms). They’re designing a more mobile-friendly, multilingual suite that offers MAPS of where to park.

St. Paul residents rely heavily on what their neighbors are doing to determine when/whether to move their cars. Pilot program would work with schools, churches to provide temporary parking spaces during snow emergencies. Public Works needs help identifying potential partners.

More potential (not guaranteed) improvements that could roll out in coming months: