Street Department faces scrutiny after snow fall

With the recent snow fall that accumulated on the streets this past week leaving people to struggle to navigate the roads, Kimball residents took to social media to vent their frustrations, focusing primarily on the work of the City of Kimball’s Street Department.

Comments posted to Facebook primarily focused on frustrations with the conditions of the roads around the local public school with one resident stating that they had seen “tons of people get stuck at the school trying to drop off the kids or trying to pick them up.”

Concerned citizen Cheryl Lee echoed these statements in a letter to this paper, stating that picking her kids up from school has “become a problem” due to the perceived lack of work by the street department.

“When they do plow, they don’t plow next to the sidewalk and many cars are parking in the roadway and our children are walking through the slush, ice and snow to get into their ride,” Lee said. “There is no where else to park, due to limited parking at the school so the road is where the majority of parents stop and wait.”

Lee also cited aggravation due to the fact the city is raising utility rates yet can’t “plow our roads or put sand down when it snows”.

Lee was not alone in her sentiment as many residents took to social media to comment on the recent increase in utility rates, questioning why with utility rates going up the street department seemingly lacked funds for more equipment or man power in times of need.

However, according to City Administrator Daniel Ortiz, utility rates and the increases recently voted on by the City Council have nothing to do with the street department as its budget depends solely on state aid and sales tax.

“That’s pretty much it. You have, in terms of state aid, we have the highway allocation funds that we get from the state as well as the motor vehicle fees. High allocation is by far the biggest amount. That would be close to $300,000 that we collected last year, and MV fees are rolled into that $300,000. Those are the only three sources of funding that goes to operations at the road department,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz also states that out of the budget that the street department is given for funding and expenses throughout the entire year, approximately $170,000 goes to paying salaries alone.

Ortiz is also quick to point out that the street department consists of only four staff members: Jim Ryschon, Street Superintendent, John Heidemann, Jim Shoup, and Randy Jefferson. That leaves the city with four staff members to cover 30 miles of street in Kimball which translates into about 106 lane miles to be maintained. This limited man power can cause several challenges when weather conditions take a turn for the worse.

“When you have something of this magnitude where you have so much snow accumulate so quickly. We’re in the negative temperatures and it doesn’t melt very rapidly and then you have a sudden spike that brings us up into 30 or 40 degree temperatures and you have such a rapid snow melt, it creates slush. And then as the temperatures cool over night, it’s obviously going to freeze over, harden and it’s going to become much more difficult to be able to do anything with it,” Ortiz said.

However, in time of need, the city will bring in employees from other departments to help with cleanup efforts.

“We put on hold what’s going on in other departments and we’ll bring in other staff to help with what they can. We don’t have so many pieces of equipment that we could put every employee on a piece of equipment and hit the road. That’s just not possible,” Ortiz said. “From the landfill, they’ll bring down their loader. Like that first snow mount that we had on February 7 when we got three to four inches in the very early morning and it was pretty high and pretty bad outside, we closed the landfill the better part of that morning.”

Along with dealing with a limited amount of employees to clear off the streets after a snow storm, the city is also dealing with limited resources concerning the materials used on the roads.

Contrary to the statements of local residents, the city does use a combination of salt and sand during icy conditions.

“We usually, I think, have about 27 tons of salt and about 100 tons of sand and so we mix that up, and we load that onto our dump trucks, our plow trucks and we spread that up as we go forward. But it’s, you know, when we’re in these negative temperatures, salt and sand are only going to be as useful as temperature and nature allow then it just adds to the mess once everything starts melting. It adds to that slush, unfortunately. We try to get out there and clean it up as best we can,” Ortiz said.

However, even these materials are becoming limited in the area with the recent snow storms occurring throughout other parts of the nation.

“What we found out from our supplier in Gothenburg is that a lot of the salt that’s available here in the region is no longer available, because it’s being trucked and shipped back East. I think we have a sufficient enough amount to get us by for a time period, and I believe we worked out an agreement with NDOR to get a supply of sand and reimburse them down the road with that. So in terms of financial resources, we’ll have the financial resources to get it. It’s just a matter of if it’s available,” Ortiz said.

The limited man power and lack of materials is also compounded by residents who seemingly undo the department’s work cleaning up the roads by taking it upon themselves to plow streets that the department has already gone over which Ortiz observed near the old West Elementary building during the last snow fall.

“The thing I realized when I was out there is that our street department had come in and plowed the street, and it was a private resident with a truck and a plow and he comes in and he completely undid everything the street department had done because he moved all the snow back into the middle of the road trying to clear a lane for his purpose or what he was intending to do. It just creates havoc for us to go back and undo what someone else had done,” Ortiz said.

Instead of taking it upon themselves to clear the roads, Ortiz encourages residents to rather contact city officials if they see a problem area so it can be addressed by the department.

“They are more than welcome to call city hall. I know, from what I’ve heard, people have been focusing on Facebook. We’ve had, in terms of what I’m assuming is a number of comments people have posted or inquired, is much larger in terms of what calls we’ve gotten here. If an emergency or a situation does arise, we try to get to it, but it’s only as good as what we’re notified to. That’s kind of a big factor,” Ortiz said.