It was a wild winter with equally extreme outcomes for city workers and finances, and Cambridge city councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler is convinced there’s more to explore toward creating a “snow corps” of volunteers for the seasons to come.
With more than 66 inches of snow dumped, and about half of it in a single weekend, the city hauled snow and ice 10 times to three snow farms and salted streets 19 times, according to staff reports. The almost $7 million spent on snow removal is close to three times what was spent last year, said councillor Cathie Zusy at a Monday meeting.
Seeing how inconsistently city streets and sidewalks are cleared even during milder bouts of winter weather inspired Sobrinho-Wheeler to ask for data in early March. He wanted to see if Cambridge should get ready to enlist help in a crisis as Boston, Baltimore, Chicago and New York do, turning to civilians through snow corps programs.
“Having people we can call up seems more more important than ever, especially when there’s fewer contractors investing in equipment” because snow clearing is a less reliable industry in our more erratic winters, Sobrinho-Wheeler said after the meeting.
There were more Cambridge student shovelers than ever this year at 117 – the program began in 2019 with eight – to help seniors exempt from having to clear their own snow. “I see the student shoveler operation and snow exemption program as part of what could get built into a snow corps,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said. “Could the city provide in the same way we do a Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program? Could we expand that so it’s not just teens, and do it in a more systematic way? Could we have folks doing more crosswalks and places like that as we build this out?”
Over the next months, Sobrinho-Wheeler expects to reach out to other cities with snow corps programs and to Cambridge’s public works and other staff so he’s ready with another policy order as next winter threatens. “Councillors have different ideas about how expansive the snow corps should be, but everyone is interested in continuing to explore it,” he said. (Councillor Patty Nolan expressed distaste Monday at “the idea of creating another bureaucracy” and wanted to rely more on students, who negotiate their own rates with neighbors.)
Councillors Nolan and Tim Flaherty suggested something would be lost if too many people opted to stay indoors and let others shovel for them. “I enjoy the shoveling and the interaction with my neighbors,” said Flaherty, who recalls enjoying even the notorious Blizzard of 1978 “very much.” The shoveling is “a nice community building experience.”
Idea from Somerville
An idea proposed the next day by Somerville city councillor Matt McLaughlin during a discussion of budget priorities there went a different direction.
McLaughlin suggested a kind of “social snow shoveling,” in Somerville buys a sidewalk plow and appoints a staffer who will be in charge of it as a free or low-cost service for seniors and people with disabilities subsidized by the rest of the community.
“It’s a way that we can do a large amount of city sidewalk shoveling without breaking the bank,” McLaughlin said, “making sure that the people who need it most are prioritized.”
Figures in the snow
While the past winter saw the fewest number of participants (41) in a program helping low-income Cambridge homeowners over the age of 60 who cannot shovel for themselves, it was by far the biggest year for complaints filed about icy or unshoveled sidewalks within the decade: 2,059, a 62 percent growth from last year’s 1,270.
There were only 569 citations issued, though, which is fewer than last year for a variety of possible reasons. Sometimes residents are just quick to file a complaint online, even before snow stops falling, public works commissioner John Nardone said. “By the time we get out to a location where somebody may have complained that nobody shoveled,” he said, “it’s actually been shoveled.” Other times a shoveling job is measured and is technically correctly done; sometimes inspectors get to a site too slowly to see the same conditions described in a complaint.
Also deceptive is the rise in the average cost of removing snow per inch since 2015. Five-year averages once showed the expense at $50,102, and now it’s $89,490. “Costs are only projected to increase, given the challenging private contractor environment, the lack of snow farms and the evidence of more extreme weather,” according to a report. Yet “it’s really about inflation,” Nardone said. “If you look at that without compounding interest rates and all this other stuff, it gets us to about the same price.”
Not to say snow removal isn’t expensive, Nardone said:
“When we do a large operation, you’re in roughly the $300,000 to $400,000 range to just get plows on the street. Then the hauling operation, as we explained in the response, that’s $250,000 to $300,000 a night to remove that snow. On both of these storms, we were out for at least four nights – I think the second storm we were actually out longer. So the money builds up pretty quickly when we have storms like this.”
One savings comes from easing up on road salt. Superintendent of streets TJ Shea has implemented a brine program that brings salt content down to 23 percent, and has automated how it’s dispensed. Ten or more years ago, Cambridge might have used 1,000 pounds of salt per lane mile, Nardone said, and that’s now down to about 200, decreasing the chances of overuse that meant sometimes “all the streets were white and all the trees were dead.”
There’s still plenty to figure out, councillors told staff, including around the garages where car owners are allowed to park for free during storms to keep the roads cleared for plows. “They have to be out after the snow emergency is lifted, but there’s no place to come back to, because their spots are now filled with snow,” councillor Marc McGovern said.
The city will also lose some existing snow farm space. Snow goes now to the west side of Danehy Park on New Street, to Mooney Street and to a Harvard University property in Allston. Mooney Street and the Allston site are both likely to be lost to development in the coming years, according to Nardone’s report.
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