The first dose of winter weather has arrived in Northeast Ohio this season, and the City of Cleveland said it’s ready when more arrives.
In a news conference on Monday, leaders from different city departments gave updates on plans for tackling winter weather.
John Laird, director of the Cleveland Department of Public Works, said undermanned plow drivers were a concern in past years, but the city is fully staffed with “about 138 workers” this season. Laird cited a change in the city's approach.
"We have a lot of seasonal folks in the past, so we're able to bring those numbers down and bring some of those folks in house," Laird said. "And also the wages that we pay, that did help as well."
The city has 60 plows in its main fleet this season, Laird added.
“We have the ability to salt,” Laird said. “Not only are we doing some salting, we’re doing a little bit more. We’re doing some brine and some other technologies that we’re using to try to make sure we’re able to adapt as the weather is a little different. I’ve been a Clevelander all my life and one thing I know about weather in Cleveland is, I don’t know the weather, so we always try to prepare.”
The city will continue to use the snowplow tracker this season. Censors are placed on all city snowplows so residents can access a website and enter an address to see which streets have been plowed.
"The snowplow tracker is not predictive, so it does not show you where the plow is going to go, but it does show you where we have been during a snow event,” said Elizabeth Crowe, from Cleveland’s Department of Urban Analytics & Innovation.
At Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, there is still room for more workers to be hired to remove snow on the runways.
“We do have four vacancies with 10 candidates in the onboarding process,” said Megan O’Connell, assistant director of marketing, communications and guest experience at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. “We are utilizing a supplementary contract to support snow operations to ensure that we have the right amount of coverage, and this will help us meet the FAA requirement for staffing.”
City officials urged residents with snowplowing concerns or questions to use the city's 311 non-emergency line.
