Last
winter, Somerville declared a total of four snow emergencies. This
season, we've already had three, and it's barely mid-January. I'm still
a strong believer in the long-term hazards of global warming, and I
will continue to work on reducing our city's carbon footprint, but it's
clear that we need to remain vigilant about coping with severe winter
weather.

We've been fortunate that none of our recent storms
have been true blizzards: this winter's snowfall totals and storm
duration have, so far, been fairly manageable. I have even heard
grumblings that Somerville has been overaggressive about declaring snow
emergencies – and, as in years past, I have also received a few
complaints from those who believe that we use snow as an excuse to
raise money by ticketing and towing the unwary.

Although I
strongly disagree, I understand that, to some extent, I brought these
unjustified suspicions on myself: Back in January of 2004, when we
established clearer, more proactive snow emergency protocols, we also
had the unfortunate experience of relying on local and national
forecasts to declare a snow emergency for a storm that never came. We
were working with the best information available – but we ended up
canceling hundreds of tickets and refunding dozens of tow charges.

The
lesson we learned was that while our protocols were good ones, we
needed to be even more suspicious of the conventional media weather
wisdom. Over the past five years, we have tried to be very careful
about picking a time to declare an emergency that will ensure that snow
is falling by the time we begin ticketing and, if necessary, towing of
vehicles. To this day, however, I remain convinced that it is better to
give people early notice of an impending snow event so that they have
plenty of time to move their cars. If the snow starts an hour or two
later than it's supposed to, than we simply have to live with that.

When
all is said and done, I'd much rather live in a city like Somerville,
where we give people early warning and then, even when the emergency
goes into effect, give them four hours to move their cars. Our policy
helps parkers and drivers alike, because it means not only that
residents have hours of advance warning, but also that our DPW has
access to more road surface before the snow accumulates. As a result,
we are able to do a much better job of plowing and conditioning our
roads, keeping them open for emergency vehicles and other essential
traffic.

This isn't just my opinion: After almost every storm,
we hear from residents and non-residents alike who report that,
whenever they cross our boundaries during and after snowstorms, the
difference in road conditions is obvious and welcome. And that
difference isn't only a matter of convenience – it's also a sign that
our city is a safer place to live.

For all these reasons, I am
very grateful to the DPW, Traffic and Parking and Police personnel who
work as needed through nights and weekends to keep our city open and
functioning. No city in the metro area has a better record on this
critical area of governmental responsibility and competence.

Of
course, no snow emergency management policy can ever be implemented
perfectly, and we will always have motorists who get ticketed and/or
towed because, despite all our efforts to get the word out, they didn't
know a snow emergency was in effect. On our narrow streets, snow plows
sometimes scrape vehicles or knock off outside mirrors.

Perhaps
the biggest issue for many Somerville residents is what to do with the
snow. As the most densely populated city in New England, we have very
limited open space on either the macro level (open, unused land) or
micro level (private yards and public curbs, walks, gutters etc.). When
we have extreme snow events, we actually have to truck snow out of some
of our major commercial squares because there just isn't enough room to
stack it up out of the way until it melts. For decades, cities and
towns used to dump snow in adjacent river or harbor waters, but – for
very good environmental reasons – we can't do that any more. We used to
be able to "store" snow on unused City property, but we've been
steadily converting parcels like the old Kemp Nut site into parks, so
most of those locations are no longer available.

Street by
street, residents shoveling their walks and driveways face a similar
problem. As a lifelong resident who has always lived on the even side
of the street, I am intimately familiar with the challenge of clearing
the sidewalk and the driveway without throwing snow into the street. I
know the end result on some blocks is mini-mountains of snow on the
curb or near the intersection – and I know this poses a challenge for
pedestrians, but there is no ideal solution, so we simply have to work
together and be patient with one another.

As for living on the
even side of the street (where we plow to the curb) as opposed to the
odd side (where parking is allowed during snow emergencies), my
personal experience is that the extra shoveling on the even side is
compensated for by the fact that I get my curb spaces back much faster
after the emergency ends. Those on the odd side of street have snowy,
rutted and sometimes inaccessible curbs for days afterwards.

If
you are a recent arrival in Somerville, you may want to look over our
snow emergency procedures, which you can find online at
www.somervillema.gov, or obtain by calling Constituent Services at 311.
If you haven't done so, you should also sign up for the Connect CTY
notification system to receive snow alerts by phone and/or email.
(We're working to add SMS text messaging to the list of notification
options.)

The key factors to remember are these:

1. We almost always declare a snow emergency when local forecasters predict four or more inches of snow for our area.

2.
When we declare an emergency, we try to do so as early as possible, and
we send out messages via media advisory and Connect CTY (30,000 phone
and email messages to residents and businesses). We post alerts on our
web homepage and on City cable channels (15 and 16 on Comcast; 15 and
13 on RCN). We activate flashing blue lights at 22 major intersections.
Our police drive through city squares and neighborhoods using their
cruisers' PA systems to warn of the impending emergency. And, of
course, you can always call 311 (617-666-3311 from outside Somerville)
or our automated Information Hotline (617-628-SNOW) for the latest snow
emergency information.

3. During snow emergencies, residents and
businesses should make a special effort to let their visitors and
customers know about Somerville's procedures. While we try our best, we
can't inform everyone all the time and, despite what cynics claim, we
don't like to issue unnecessary snow tickets.