Wednesday, December 29, 2010

RESPONSE TO A COMPLAINT ABOUT AN UNPLOWED STREET

Received from Brad Lander's office at 3:00 a.m. today (Wednesday), in response to an online complaint about a street not being plowed:
Dear Neighbor-

Thank you for submitting your snow removal issue to our office.  It's quite frustrating that the storm clean up is taking so long and it's been a trying couple days for everyone.

However, we will be reviewing your submission and sending street clearing issues to the Department of Sanitation and other issues to the appropriate agencies.

We would also like to share the following information about time frames for snow removal, as many of you have inquired about them.

We cannot obtain time frames for specific streets, but our understanding of the time frame given the extent of work today is that many side streets will be cleared tonight and tomorrow, with the hope that the bulk of the side streets will be reached by tomorrow evening.  However, we cannot guarantee that this will be the case, as there clearly is a lot of work to do and this was an extraordinarily large snowstorm.

For street crossings that are blocked for pedestrians by mounds of snow, our understanding is that this is a lower priority for the Department of Sanitation behind ensuring emergency vehicle access to all streets but that they are responsible for making street crossings passable for pedestrians after plowing them.

There is a very long wait for a tow for abandoned vehicles.  Abandoned cars on major streets will get a higher priority.  We are unclear when MTA buses that are stuck will be moved.

Please follow up with us tomorrow mid-morning using our webform at www.bradlander.com/snow to report any updates so we can tell how many issues have been resolved.

Michael Freedman-Schnapp
Office of Councilmember Brad Lander
Director of Policy
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