City officials can’t say they surprised by last Friday’s monster snowfall. Sophisticated computer modeling gave them several days to prepare. Yet five days later, as another snowstorm hit the region, many District of Columbia residents were still housebound and contemplating the next storm, even as an appalling number of major roads and intersections remained uncleared. Mayor Adrian Fenty should fire D.C. Department of Transportation Director Gabe Klein and Department of Public Works Director Bill Howland, the two city employees in charge of snow removal, and use the money saved to hire a private contractor.
In contrast to the poor performance of Klein and Howland, Adam Brown, owner of Springfield, Va.-based Premium Paving, told The Examiner his crews had already managed to clear the snow from 100 percent of his retail and commercial customers’ properties in the District, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia — and were busy getting ready for the new storm that arrived here last night.
Keeping public roads passable — even under extremely trying circumstances like these — is an excellent barometer of how the Fenty administration approaches its most basic responsibilities to the public. Judging by its failure to keep the city’s roads plowed during the latest snow emergency, the administration has obviously gone adrift.
Despite the advance warning, Klein and Howland failed to plan to have enough bulldozers or salt on hand. Despite a computerized tracking system, some city streets have been plowed three times, but others not at all. Citizens who attempted to find out when their block would be plowed by checking http://snowmap.dc.gov/ were instead taken to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Sex Offender Registry. As many as 25 percent of the city’s snowplows are out of commission, according to WTOP, while irate motorists were getting $250 tickets for parking in unmarked snow emergency routes.
Yet during this latest example of District government ineptitude, Fenty urged city residents to be “patient,” then praised government workers for their work. The final indignity is a D.C. law that requires private residents and businesses to remove snow and ice from their sidewalks within eight hours — or face a $25 fine. Most city taxpayers ask for little in return for their own hard shoveling — or the high-wage taxes they’re forced to pay. They have every right to be angry when the officials in charge of clearing snow are not up to the job.Neither, it seems, is their boss.
