City works to keep snow off main roads

Mountain Home city officials know they simply can't plow every street in Mountain Home, so they don't even try.

Instead, the city makes plowing certain streets and intersections a priority, Mayor Tom Rist said.

"The idea is if you can get out of your subdivision, you can get on a road that is plowed and sanded," he said, while adding public buildings such as schools, the fire and police departments and the hospital are also priorities.

Rist said dealing with the snow this year has been harder than in years past because of the unusual amount of snow the city has received.

The mayor said the city has spent most of the winter just trying to keep up with the snow.

The streets department keeps crews on the roads 24 hours a day when needed, but that creates other problems as well, Rist explained, since it leaves the department understaffed during the day shift, which causes equipment to go unused during the day.

Rist said the possibility of hiring outside help to plow the streets has been discussed, but not only would budget considerations have to be made, the reality is that anyone they would hire has already been hired out.

Instead, the city has relied on assistance from other city departments to aid the street department in clearing the city streets.

Rist credited employees from the parks and recreation department and the water department, as well as the city golf course and cemetery, for their work during the recent snowstorms. He said any city employee with the proper license and training were also operating snow-removal equipment.

"I think the public owes them a debt of gratitude. They did a tremendous job," Rist said.

The city doesn't go into subdivisions by its own policy.

Public Works Director Wayne Shepherd said this is because the narrower streets in subdivisions make it hard to move the snow. If they plow the driving lanes, the snow goes into the parking areas and if they pave the parking areas the snow goes onto the sidewalks.

Instead, the city chooses to use its resources to plow what Shepherd and Rist refer to as "collectors," roads such as Airbase Road, American Legion, Main Street and a grid of others.

Shepherd said the city's strategy for those streets is to keep two lanes open.

As the streets are plowed, they are also covered with a salt and sand mix. Rist said the temperature has to be 26 degrees or higher for the salt to have any affect on the roads, so sometimes the salt will not be effective right away. The salt/sand mixture is premixed before it is loaded into the trucks.

Shepherd said the city converts its dump trucks into sanders and plowers and to move snow to a different location, the trucks have to be converted back to dump trucks.

The mayor said he gets between five to ten phone calls a day from people asking about snow removal and that most understand they just have to "wait their turn."

"We try to take care of everyone in a timely manner, but there's only so much we can do," he said. "I think we are doing a good job with the manpower and equipment we have."

Rist plans to meet with key personal later this week to discuss how the city handled snow removal and to determine if they can be more effective. He said he welcomed public input on that matter, but reminded the public the city has to work within budgets while maintaining public safety.

In the Dec. 24 issue of the Mountain Home News, the mayor asked citizens to shovel the snow from their sidewalks onto their property instead of the city street.

He said he had complaints shortly after from citizens who had complied with his request, only to find their sidewalks covered with snow the next morning after city plows pushed the snow from the roads onto their sidewalks.

Shepherd said the streets department is working on making adjustments, such as the speed of the trucks and the angle of the plow, to help prevent that from happening, but said the adjustment process is "ongoing."