Locals left to dig out again

LYNN – Bitter cold was forecast today in the wake of Friday’s storm that pummeled the region with another 6-8 inches of snow, causing school and business closings and wreaking havoc with commuters.Plows had difficulty keeping up with the snowfall, which began in earnest shortly after 7 a.m. and continued past noon.Winds on Friday averaged 23 mph with gusts clocked at 47 mph, according to AccuWeather. The steady winds complicated street and sidewalk plowing.The storm caused the third cancellation of schools in Lynn and other North Shore communities since the year began.”Everybody keeps asking me the same question. Will the kids have to go to school in July if this keeps up? And I tell them, no, we can’t go past June 30,” said Lynn School Committee member Donna Coppola. “Even if we continue to get snow, we can’t go into July with the school year. A few years back, the state Department of Education made a decision on that. It means we must do it all in the calendar year.”According to Coppola, the Lynn School Department must hold classes on 180 days. “If snow causes cancellation of school, those days have to be made up one way or another, by canceling vacations, going to school on Saturdays or attending longer days,” she said. “We hope any other snow days come during February vacation break. Otherwise, it will be hot on the other end, but it’s better than having kids walk through snowbanks or fall on slippery ice. I’d rather see them tubing at Gannon.”The last two January storms cost the city approximately $500,000 each, although the final accounting is still in progress, according to Department of Public Works Commissioner Jay Fink.Fink said Friday’s storm was not the same caliber of the earlier storms, with its lighter snow and less accumulation. He estimated the cleanup cost at $100,000.”It was a quick hit. It came and it’s going out. But how much it’ll cost is hard to say. We’re still out plowing,” Fink said Friday afternoon.He noted cars left on the street despite the emergency parking ban caused countless headaches for plow drivers.”I was out there at 3 a.m. and I could not believe the number of cars parked on the street,” he said. “It was horrendous. Cars were everywhere and I don’t know why. People were given plenty of notice. The snow emergency and parking ban were announced. It was on TV, the radio, the Internet, the city Web site, Itemlive and the blue lights were flashing. The cars had to be off the street by midnight. What else can the city do beside knock on every door before these people go to bed?”Fink said plows were forced to go around parked cars, creating a safety hazard.”I know this storm wasn’t hyped up as a nor’easter like the previous two, but meter maids were writing tickets and hundreds of cars were towed,” he said.The public works commissioner said a few large city plows broke down, as did a rental plow.”When you have this many storms back to back, you’re going to have equipment failure,” he said. “We have rented trucks in the past as opposed to buying them. When you rent, you don’t have the maintenance cost. If the transmission blows on one of those big trucks, it’s up to the rental company to fix it.”Swampscott School Superintendent Lynne Celli said the district has five snow days built into its calendar and has used three of those to date.”At this point, the last day of school is June 20,” Celli said Friday. “If we go over the scheduled five extra days built into the calendar, we must make up those days to get to a total of 180 student school days.”The last day for Johnson Elementary School in Nahant is June 21, presuming the five snow days built into the calendar are used.School Committee member Christine Kendall said the district has only used two snow days and she can’t imagine that Nahant would use all five.”Typically we have very few snow days,” she said. “We’ve never discussed it as a School Committee but I assume if we go over the five snow days that we would go to school later in June or cut i