Downtown snow removal becomes issue

LACONIA — One indication of how much snow the area has received this winter is the condition of downtown streets and sidewalks.

Councilor Bruce Cheney noted at the Monday night City Council meeting that snowy berms have built up along downtown streets, sometimes inhibiting pedestrian access to sidewalks or presenting driving hazards.

“I have been in the city a long time and it is my recollection that every time it snowed, a day or so later Public Works was on Main Street, Pleasant Street, some of the other streets, picking up the snow or snow blowing it into a truck and hauling it off,” he said.

This year that hasn’t always been the case, Cheney said.

Sometimes cars can’t pull all the way into angle-parking spaces and the back of vehicles extend into traffic.

“Driving up Main Street is like driving up a slalom course,” he said. “I'd like to ask that we renew our efforts to clean up Main Street.”

He also said that plowed snow has formed a 10-foot hill in one area downtown.

At one point, a crosswalk near the downtown bicycle shop dead-ended into a snow berm.

“If you wanted, you could hop the snow bank, but if you’re 75 years old, that’s not easy,” Cheney said.

“I just think we need to pay more attention to the condition of downtown after a snowstorm. In the midst of discussing the Colonial Theatre refurbishment and improving downtown, to leave that snow on the sidewalk and streets is not helpful. I think it's a significant issue.”

Mayor Ed Engler said that, after a snowstorm, he noticed a problem.

“We had a crosswalk to nowhere because you couldn’t get up on the sidewalk on either side of the street,” he said.

In an interview, Public Works Director Wes Anderson acknowledged that it has been hard to keep up with the snow this winter.

“The last month, it’s been snowing every three days,” he said.

Normally, workers would load downtown snow into the back of trucks and haul it away. However, those same trucks are also used to salt and sand the streets, and when they are set up to do that, they can’t haul away snow.

“We maybe get a half-day worth of loading out snow, and then we have to put the salter back in,” he said.

The alternative would be to get a contractor to do the sanding, leaving the city trucks open for more snow-hauling operations. However, there would be a cost to do that.

Ben Bullerwell, co-owner of Wayfarer Coffee Roasters, said he thinks the city usually does a pretty good job of clearing the sidewalks outside his shop.

It’s an important issue for him.

“Clearly, if there’s no access to the sidewalks, a coffee shop without a drive-through won’t see as much traffic,” he said.

On Wednesday, customers were angle parking along Main Street outside his business. A snow berm stood between their cars and the sidewalk, but icy paths were cut through the berm at various places to allow pedestrian access from the street to the sidewalk.

The council asked the city manager to put this issue on the agenda for the next meeting and he said he would do so.