Schenectady city leaders blast snow removal efforts after storm
Some employees turned down working extra hours following their shifts
Tales of snowplows getting stuck, outside contractors blocking residential driveways and city employees declining overtime to assist with plowing were problems that complicated the city’s lackluster snow removal efforts.
“When we have a storm like this, we need our employees, and we didn’t have them,” said General Services Commissioner Paul Lafond during Monday’s City Council Committee discussion about Schenectady’s poor response after Mother Nature lashed the Electric City with nearly 2 ½-feet of snow last week.
He said the city was prepared for upwards of a foot of snow.
But after completing their shifts, some employees turned down working extra hours.
As a result, the city was forced to hire several private contractors and had help
from the state for a total of 40 more pieces of equipment in additional to the 21 the city deployed.
City Councilwoman Karen ZalewskiWidzunas said she has been fielding calls from city residents since Thursday. She said the crews put forth a “valiant effort on trying to maintain the street being clear. But at the end of the day we failed.”
“Do we need more equipment, do we need more staff, do we need more vendors, how are we going to address this going forward?” she asked.
Councilwoman Carmel Patrick, who is in her first term on the panel, asked about towing cars off streets.
Mayor Gary Mccarthy said the city uses towing as a last resort.
“If you want to compensate our employees for the work they do, and get them to come to work, they’ve got to be paid for it.” Paul Lafond, General Services commissioner
He said the snow was falling so heavy at times that it was difficult to keep up.
The mayor stressed that the intensity and rate the snow was falling at times made the cleanup more snow removal than snow plowing.
“The quantity of snow that fell, there wasn’t any place to put it,” he said, adding that crews dumped it on sidewalks and some homeowners then threw it back onto the street.
Mccarthy reminded the city that the governing body had last year refused to approve a capital project budget that included a heavy duty snowblower that can toss snow over cars.
Outgoing City Councilwoman Leesa Perazzo rejected that argument.
“This is not a matter of equipment, this is a matter of staffing,” she countered. “This is a matter that we didn’t have butts in the seats of the equipment that we have.”
She also said part of the reason some employees refused to work overtime is because morale is a problem, to which Lafond said the real issue is that Schenectady needs to consider paying its staff more money considering that some area municipalities pay about $6 more an hour.
“If you want to compensate our employees for the work they do, and get them to come to work, they’ve got to be paid for it,” added Lafond.
Councilwoman Marion Porterfield complained side streets were in deplorable condition and that in some instances two-way streets were reduced to one way.
“It seemed like we had this conversation last year when we had a major storm,” added Porterfield. In fact, the city did, almost exactly a year ago.
A Dec. 2019 storm also took several days to clean up with assistance from outside contractors, the National Guard and the Department of Transportation.
Mccarthy said he expects the current snow removal will continue over the next few days.
Meanwhile, Councilman John Polimeni proposed the council consider launching a pilot project in the Bellevue neighborhood for alternate side of the street parking to alleviate issues related to snow removal and cleaning streets.
He said that the idea is to see how it works, review it in six months and possibly expand it to other parts of the city.