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Caledonia residents adhering to alternate side parking ordinance
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By Charlie Warner
Argus News Editor
“People seem to be adhering to it pretty well. We used to have to spend a lot of time ‘back plowing’ but it seems better this year.”
That’s the way Interim City Clerk/Administrator Mike Gerardy summed up the first snow event, which occurred over the Thanksgiving weekend. The ‘“it” he was referring to is the alternate side parking ban the city uses every winter to help keep the “snow birds” to a minimum.
“Back plowing” is when a parked vehicle is in the way of the snow-removal process and city crews are forced to return to clear the snow from that portion of the street after the vehicle is moved.
The parking ban is in effect from Nov. 1 to March 31 in Caledonia regardless if the city receives snow or not from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. on the odd-numbered side of streets on odd-numbered days and the even-numbered side of streets on even-number days.
The city police department usually doesn’t begin enforcing the ban the first week or two. But as November begins to slip towards December, warning tickets are usually issued.
“This year the city didn’t issue warnings, but gave out tickets. That got folks’ attention,” Gerardy said. And there really wasn’t any favoritism shown either. Gerardy’s son got a ticket while visiting over the Thanksgiving weekend.
“People got caught off-guard when we got that snow in November,” Gerardy said. “And I was one of them,” he added with a laugh.
The alternate side parking ban is a very helpful tool for snow removal, Gerardy noted. Before the city adopted the ordinance, trying to clear the city’s streets after a snow was quite challenging, with many vehicles parked on both sides of the streets. The city plows basically just plowed down the center and had to come back several times to clear the entire roadway once all the vehicles were dug out.
“This is more user friendly for everyone,” Gerardy pointed out. “If everyone adheres to this, we can plow one side of every street the night of a storm and then come back during the day when most vehicles are moved, as people go to work.”
City crews normally begin the monumental chore of clearing all the city streets around 2:30 a.m. They begin early so that the majority of the streets are cleared before residents head out to work in the morning. With a four-inch snow, crews can have the city done in four to five hours. Crews will then take a break and finish clearing what’s left later in the day.
“It really depends on how much snow we get and when we get it,” Gerardy replied when asked if the 2 a.m. start is engraved in stone. “If a storm moves in during the morning hours and it looks like we’re going to get a lot, we’ll get out early and try to stay ahead of it. It’s a lot easier to clear the streets if we don’t have a lot of traffic driving on new-fallen snow.”
Another reason for the nocturnal plowing schedule is there isn’t a lot of traffic to contend with at 3 a.m.
You can contact Charlie Warner at
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