In my first winter in Indianapolis, the winter of 1975-76, I was somewhat taken aback observing how the city handled snow. To someone who grew up in Chicago, under the reign of Richard J. Daley, I knew what great snow removal was. And what I observed during my first Indianapolis winter was something far less than that.
Unlike Chicago, I was told that in Indianapolis, “We don’t get that much here. So don’t expect what you expected up there.”
Two winters later, the legendary Blizzard of 1978, with over two feet of snow, paralyzed the city and state for a couple of weeks.
That legendary 1978 Blizzard woke Indy up a bit.
During that blizzard is when then Mayor Bill Hudnut set the gold standard for Mayoral leadership with his inexhaustible appearances all throughout the city. Hudnut was on TV, radio and visible in the neighborhoods with the men on the snowplows battling Indianapolis’ worst winter storm.
In the years after the ’78 Blizzard, Indianapolis tried to step up its snow removal game. The city created “Snow Emergency Routes,” red, white and blue signs on Indianapolis’ most vital streets where there was to be no parking during major snowstorms so the plows could get in and take care of business.
Under Hudnut, the city established policies that if snow reached a certain level, the city would go into the neighborhood streets and attempt to plow them out using city plows, garbage trucks fitted with plows as well as enlisting an army of private contractors.
After 1978, the City’s attitude was they would spend whatever it took to make sure roads, both the main ones, and in the event of large snowfalls neighborhood streets, would be cleared. Expense be damned!
In a top 20, world-class city like Indianapolis, the three basic obligations of city government are:
Public safety – Keeping people safe from crime and fire and having a professional paramedic and ambulance services.
Trash and waste collection – Collecting the garbage and waste and disposing of it safely.
Snow removal – For any city susceptible to snow and ice, making sure that the streets are cleared and made safe in a timely manner.
Everything else, building cricket fields, travelling to exotic foreign locations to drum up jobs we never see, buying electric cars and trucks are irrelevant if a major world class city isn’t meeting these three basic obligations.
In my last five winters here in Indianapolis, snow removal has noticeably deteriorated under Mayor Greg Ballard’s watch.
Here’s what I wrote four winters ago when, after the city endured an ice storm with two inches of ice on city streets, the Ballard Administration forced three extra days of no schools because of their inept handling of the storm.
In a February 10, 2011 column, I described the City’s snow/ice removal ineptitude.
On Wednesday morning (Feb 2), Mayor Ballard discussed “what the City could do to help children return to school.” The response to only send trucks to “connector streets and intersections near schools” didn’t solve the problem of making sure that school bus routes were clear.
Obviously the Mayor and his minions failed to grasp the impact of what two inches of ice does to school sidewalks, parking lots and school bus routes.
The DPW memo said “discussions” continued all day Thursday (Feb 3) on what to do about schools. But no decision was made to move plows into residential streets until Friday.
The storm in 2011 wasn’t the first example of Ballard’s snow fighting incompetence.
One of Indianapolis’ most distinguished servant/leaders Sheila Suess Kennedy wrote in her blog “Sheila Kennedy” on December 9, 2009 about a similar example of a lack of leadership.
Snow removal last year was abysmal. You would think that our Mayor might have used the summer to correct the problems. Evidently not. Living downtown, I’m used to MY streets, at least, being plowed and/or salted. This morning, however, with a mere 2 ft. of snow, traffic was crawling down College on a sheet of ice. I also saw no evidence that there had ever been trucks–(on other downtown streets).
Days after the snow and bitter arctic cold, Indy residents, and those in the suburbs, lit up social media venting their anger on Facebook, Twitter and the TV stations’ websites blasting Ballard and his boyz on their snow fighting incompetence.
Five days after the storm, main streets like Meridian, 38th and other key arteries had so many ice clumps littering the roads that driving in Indianapolis reverted back to the early 18th Century. Drivers learned what it was like riding horse drawn Conestoga wagons on the National Road in the 1820’s.
Stung by the valid criticisms, our mayor uttered an incredible statement last Thursday, Jan 9 on WTHR/Channel 13. Ballard said, “It was only four or five years ago that we started going into neighborhoods. The city never did that before until I became the mayor.”
In the nearly 20 years of this column, I have never flatly called someone a liar. Mayor Ballard’s statement on Channel 13 was a flat out, boldfaced, Pinocchio lie.
Since the ’78 Blizzard, Mayors Hudnut, Goldsmith and Peterson sent plows into neighborhood streets. And though I didn’t live here then, I suspect Mayor Lugar and his predecessors did too.
Channel 13’s reporters and producers (and any other media that let Ballard say that) shouldn’t have let him utter misstatements unchallenged.
Last Sunday’s Indianapolis Star, though, revealed another of Ballard’s snow fighting shortcomings.
Seems Indy has no target benchmarks, metrics or timetables for Indy’s self-described “Indy Snow Force” to meet.
The Star reported that many cities like Denver, Columbus, Ohio and even Carmel have specific target goals of how many hours after a snow fall should main streets be cleared; how many hours to clear neighborhood streets.
Shockingly, the Star reveals that Ballard, who prides himself on running his government with metrics and targets doesn’t use them when it comes to snow removal.
Makes you wonder if Mayor Ballard even had a snow removal plan for the 2012 Super Bowl. Because if Indy cleared streets then like they cleared them last week, we’d have been humiliated worldwide!
See ‘ya next week!
Email comments to acbrown@aol.com.
