Chuck the cocoa. As the third weather system in as many weeks dumped snow on top of the piles of not-so-white stuff clogging neighborhoods and tangling traffic all over Denver, the inner child in all of us got a lot harder to find.
Businesses have taken hits, cars have been abandoned or wrecked, workers unable to get to their jobs have lost income, and everyone has lost patience.
There’s no denying it on Day 18 of the big freeze: The thrill is gone. Way gone.
Folks answering the 311 calls for city services in Denver probably know best.
While some people realize the fiscal implications of responding to an extraordinary series of back-to-back snowstorms, others are not so understanding. “We’re hearing from people who say the city needs to manage the storm response at any cost,” said Sue Cobb, spokeswoman for Mayor John Hickenlooper.
I can relate.
As one of the legions of transplants from Midwestern cities where blizzards are commonplace and plowing neighborhood streets is, duh, standard operating procedure, the local tradition of waiting for a Chinook wind to clear the snow always has seemed dopey to me.
So, like everybody else in town, I called the mayor to offer an opinion.
He tried to be patient.
No way is he satisfied with the condition of the streets, he said. “No, absolutely not. We have to do a better job.”
A lot of people have been stuck inside their homes for a week or more, he said, and that is “unacceptable.” A lot of businesses have taken it on the chin during the holidays, a crucial time for the retail, hospitality and travel industries.
“But the challenge is how to do the job without breaking the bank.”
Snow removal has cost the city at least $9.6 million so far, not including responding to the storm that hit the region on Friday.
And that’s with results that have satisfied exactly no one.
Buying another 80 snowplows to double the city’s fleet so it could clear most neighborhood streets on the first day of a storm would cost about $15 million, the mayor said, and that wouldn’t cover the costs for snowplow drivers, chemicals to de-ice the streets, fuel, maintenance costs, and on and on.
If the Hickenlooper administration invested that kind of dough in snow removal and storms like the whoppers of ’06-’07 didn’t materialize again for 20 years, hizzoner would be ridiculed for decades for his extravagant political folly.
Then again … if he does nothing and we’re stuck in our driveways like this again in a month, the guy’s career will hurtle into oblivion faster than you can say “Bill McNichols who?”
So, the mayor is stuck between a rock and a snowdrift.
“Look, I come out of a service background,” he said. “No business escaped the wrath, the impact of these storms. My heart breaks for these restaurant folks who do 40 percent of their sales on Friday and Saturdays. This is three weeks in a row they’ve been snowed out.
“But personally I’m not ready to cut cops” to pay for more snowplows.
This would be particularly bad form in light of the continuing investigation into the murder of Bronco Darrent Williams.
So, Hickenlooper said he’s looking for the “million- or million-and-a-half-dollar” solution instead.
This might involve retrofitting more city equipment so neighborhood streets can be plowed before they turn into rutted moonscapes, training more city employees who usually patch potholes so they can drive plows without sideswiping parked cars, and hiring more private contractors to assist the city during a storm.
It might work.
After all, the snow will melt eventually, and El Niño could leave us high and dry. All might be forgotten. Maybe.
But, for a place willing to ante up $20 million in private donations for another extremely rare event – the Democratic convention – $1.5 million for better snow removal seems pretty weak.
Somewhere in that $852.4 million city budget, there has to be a better way.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
