07-12-2006 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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ce+ j 2V14 Sena MAYOR Bill Btesener COUNCIL Jim LaValle Rick Montour Barbara Allan John Keis 515 Little Canada Road, Little Canada, MN 55117 -1600 ADMINISTRATOR (651) 766 -4029 / FAX: (651) 766 -4048 Joel R. Hanson www.ci.little- canada.mn.us MEMORANDUM To: Mayor Blesener & Members of City Council From: Bill Dircks, Public Works Superintendent Date: July 6, 2006 Re: Winter Overnight Parking Ban The biggest hindrance on the City's snow plowing operations has been parked cars on city streets. The cars cause the plows to swerve out wide to miss them and leaves a large windrow of snow piled in the street that usually freezes over by the following day and becomes a hazard for drivers. The Public Works Department spends a fair amount of time going back to various spots in the days after snow events to clean up behind parked cars. There have also been cars parked in cul -de -sacs making it very difficult to maneuver our equipment and leaving fewer spots to store the plowed snow. The bulk of the cars are repeat offenders over the course of the winter, but those offenders change each year and there are always new cars parked on the street after each snowfall. I have attached a document detailing where cars were parked during our last two storms of the winter this past year. As you can see we had cars on more than ten streets on each route. Our policy has been to plow when there is 2 inches or more of snowfall. At that point a snow emergency is declared unofficially and the Ramsey County Sheriff is supposed to tag parked cars and, eventually, have them towed if they are not moved in a satisfactory time. The problem has always been the enforcement of our policy. We have had a difficult time getting the Sheriff to tag cars and there have been snow events that have not quite reached 2 inches of depth. In many cases it makes more sense to plow 1.5 inches of snowfall than to use salt -sand. In other instances the City has experienced one -inch snowfalls over three or four consecutive days. At some point we need to clean up the streets following these storms. It takes much more salt -sand to melt the entire roadway especially in colder temperatures. Plowing results in much less de -icing work to be done. In order to improve plowing operations and to clean up the gray areas around snow emergencies the Public Works Department requests that the City Council approve a Winter On- Street Parking Ban from 2:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. from November I through