November 30, 2019
 
Dear Residents.
 
We recognize that the last few days have been challenging in terms of travel throughout Town and elsewhere. Our Public Works Department closely watches weather conditions in advance of incoming events and has detailed response procedures. We started our response as snow began to fall the afternoon of Tuesday November 27^th. Our snow crew worked through the night and through the evening of Wednesday the 28^th. We continued to monitor weather conditions and street conditions in the following days. Our Parks Department was also busy clearing sidewalks and trails throughout this event.

The primary goal of Public Works is to ensure safety. For this reason our focus is on arterial streets first, followed by collector streets and lastly on lower speed and lower traffic local (neighborhood) streets. The Town’s Snow Removal procedures can be found online at https://www.erieco.gov/546/Snow-Removal-Procedures.

While this storm deposited up to twelve or more inches in some areas of Town, the unusual combination of volume (depth), spring-like water content and cold temperatures made this storm a unique challenge for Erie and communities throughout the Front Range. The Public Works Department decided not to plow local streets due to the likelihood of creating further problems in the form of ridges, windrows, snow banks, snow dams and potentially making them impassable for residents and first responders as well as extending the time for those obstructions to melt.

Public Works mobilized a second time on Friday November 29^th to take advantage of clear skies and snow melt and removed significant additional amounts of snow. Temperatures continue to be on a warming trend since the start of this event and will continue to reduce snow-packed street conditions. Throughout the event Public Works also cleared streets on a case-by-case basis for special needs (handicap), severe circumstances or at the request of our public safety officers.

Please know that public safety is at the forefront of our thoughts in these events and that we are always open to your suggestions and input.
 
Sincerely,
 
Todd Fessenden
Director of Public Works