Snow plows work to clear Arlington streets. Photo Contributed
The fallout of the 2016 massive snowstorm is coming to a close for Arlington.
“We’re in phase four, the clean-up phase, which follows the residential phase,” said Greg Emmanuel, director of the Department of Environmental Services. “Today was alleys. More importantly, we got curb to curb on some of our arterials to fully restore transit operations.”
Emmanuel said that the county is gradually letting contractors go and will shortly begin the lessons-learned process. County Manager Mark Schwartz noted that, in the future, the county needs to do a better job of mapping and tracking which areas were plowed.
“My street was done, but the online map said it hadn’t been yet,” Schwartz said. “There’s a lot of people searching for that information and we have to do a better job of that.”
Jane Rudolph, director of the Department of Parks and Recreation, addressed questions about why the bicycle trails were clear while the county was still working on clearing the main roads.
“In fiscal year 2015, the board allocated funding for the Parks Department to plow nine miles of trail concurrently while the roads are being plowed. There were two pieces of equipment with four employees, and they clear the trails. Those employees and equipment could not be used on the streets. We’re not pulling resources from the streets to clear the trails.”