Government struggles to clear the streets.
Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane, snow is glistening. A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, walking in a winter wonderland.
You know the whimsical words. But the harsh reality of back-to-back winter storms that cold-cocked the region in
the last two weeks hasn't been quite so pleasant.
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Bumpers scrape together, are you listening? In the lane, abandoned Toyota Corollas covered with snow are glistening. A horrific sight, we're going to have a long commute tonight, driving in a winter wonderland.
That's more like it.
The storms have dumped a record-setting snowfall on the area and forced the closure of schools, businesses and government offices while causing dozens, if not hundreds, of traffic accidents. Meanwhile, city, county and state workers have scrambled to clean up the mess.
"I think our crews are really doing their best with the equipment and the staffing levels they have," Mayor David Coss says. "They've been working 24-hour rotating shifts since the first storm [on Dec. 19], and they're going to continue doing that. They're trying to keep up with it, but with the snow we've had, it's tough to do."
Not everyone is quite so diplomatic.
"I haven't seen any evidence of public spaces being plowed," Tim Marx, a salesman at Native Jackets on San Francisco Street, says. "No evidence of public maintenance whatsoever."
Marx isn't alone in his appraisal of the city's efforts to clear streets and walkways. While sidewalk maintenance is largely the province of individual property owners, Coss
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has heard numerous complaints about the city's response to the clogged roadways. Large swaths of the city have been reduced to a quagmire of nearly undrivable roads even days after the snow stopped falling. Part of the problem is a lack of resources.
"We're using the resources that we have," Lawrence Ortiz, director of the city's Streets and Drainage Maintenance Division, says. "Our budget in a normal season is borderline adequate. When the snowfall gets heavier, it's not. But [the city] is flexible about giving us more money as we need it."
They need it. Ortiz says the Public Works Department has six plows, three graders and two loaders and just under $40,000 allocated to snow removal for the more than 1,200 "lane miles" that fall under the city's jurisdiction. In order to meet the demand, maintenance crews have to prioritize its efforts in high-traffic areas.
A Jan. 2 press release from the city states that 65 percent of the total lane miles have been plowed or graded and 90 percent of unpaved streets have been graded. The city also says it plans to clear most of the snow and ice downtown by Friday.
James V Lujan, director of Public Works for Santa Fe County, has a similar problem. Lujan says the county's budget for road maintenance is approximately $3 million, but only a fraction of that is used to remove snow on the estimated 583 miles of road maintained by the county.
"We try to hit the main roads first and then we get to shaded spots and then we'll hit the rural roads when we can get to them," Lujan says. "We get a lot of requests from people wanting us to plow side roads, but a week after the first storm we were still cleaning that up."
The problems were further exacerbated by roads within the city limits that fall under a cross-stitch of county, state and city jurisdictions. St. Francis Drive, St. Michael's Drive and Cerrillos Road are all
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considered state roads, for instance, while different sections of Paseo de Peralta fall under the authority of both the city and the state.
According to SU Mahesh, a New Mexico Department of Transportation spokesman, the state has more than 1,000 sand trucks and plows in operation, but roads like St. Francis have to compete with other DOT priorities like Interstate 25. As a result, Ortiz says the city often assists the DOT in clearing state roads.
"We do what we can to help, but those are their roads," Ortiz says. "We try to communicate and make sure that we get each other's help, but they've got their set of priorities and we've got our priorities."
While major roads like Paseo and Cerrillos get a bulk of the attention, many of Santa Fe's neighborhood streets are largely neglected for days.
"The main roads are usually not the problem," City Councilor Chris Calvert, a US Postal Service mail carrier, says. "The roads that are problems are the ones in the neighborhoods that don't get much traffic. They tend to freeze and thaw and get icy. I'm out there slipping and sliding all over the place delivering the mail."
But the weather has been a boon to people like Paul Garcia, the owner of A-1 Towing. Garcia's company is doing about four times the business it normally does this time of year, and he says his tow trucks haven't had too much trouble navigating the roads.
"I think they're doing the best they can," Garcia says of the city's efforts. "It takes a while to clear the roads sometimes, but we've been able to get to where we need to go."
Coss commends the around-the-clock efforts of city road crews but acknowledges that additional resources could help salve some of the maintenance woes.
"It's hard in an area like this to do the cost-benefit analysis on how many trucks and how many staff you should have available for snowfall," Coss says. "But we're in our strategic planning process right now, and I think you're probably going to see the governing body try to find more funding for a couple more trucks and a couple more plows."
But more resources won't necessarily mean better results. At least according to Ryan Gray, a native Santa Fean who works as a valet at the Inn of the Anasazi and remains skeptical about the city's efforts.
"I don't think the city is doing a very good job," Gray says, peering across Washington Avenue. "I shoveled this sidewalk in less time than it took four city workers to do the sidewalk on the other side of the street."
Marlon Heimerl contributed to this story.
