LYNN — The City Council spent a portion of its meeting Tuesday taking the two heads of the Department of Public Works to task for the city’s inadequate plowing response during this month’s snowstorm.
Public Works Commissioner Andrew Hall and Associate Commissioner Lisa Nerich appeared before the body at the request of Council President Darren Cyr, who called the city’s snow removal during this month’s two-day snowstorm “lousy” and one that received a failing grade.
Hall cited the lack of private contractors that had signed up with the city this year as the reason for snow-covered roads and poor driving conditions continuing a day after the Dec. 16-17 storm — which dumped more than a foot of snow in Lynn — ended.
While 204 private contractors signed up with the city this year, only 178 were available for the storm, said Hall, noting that number represents a 20 percent drop from the 243 contractors signed up for last winter, and a 64 percent decrease from the 2018-19 winter when 335 contractors had signed up.
“Can it get done with fewer contractors? Yes, but it takes longer and things fall through the cracks,” said Hall. “I did the best I could and I hope to get more contractors signed up, basically.”
Hall said the city seeks to sign up 250 private contractors operating vehicles from pickups to heavy equipment, including dump trucks, to plow a major snow storm, such as the one that was seen this month.
Cyr suggested that fewer contractors are signing up with the city because they don’t get called out to clear roads as often as they would in other communities, which causes them to seek work in neighboring communities instead.
While the city is comparable to what other communities are paying private contractors — the city pays from $75 an hour to $190 an hour depending on the size of their snow removal equipment — they can choose to go to other communities where they will get more hours, Cyr said.
“I’ve been plowing since I was 15,” said Cyr. “The reality of it is all plow drivers know they have to push snow to the side and they didn’t this time … (Every councilor) received numerous calls telling us what a lousy job we did. And we did. We failed. People pay a lot of taxes in this city and they deserve better.”
But Hall said the solution to getting more contracted plow drivers in the city was simple.
“How do we get more plows? It’s pretty basic. We pay them more,” said Hall.
Ward 7 Councilor Jay Walsh, who noted he also started plowing at 15 years old, said the poor job the city did with snow removal during this month’s storm is a problem that has been building for years.
Not being able to retain private contractors who have an “institutional knowledge” of city roads, such as the quirks and niches that they would encounter while trying to clear snow on certain streets, has resulted in poor plowing done by inexperienced drivers, Walsh said.
“Over the years, this has been eroding,” said Walsh, explaining that many of those experienced contractors have taken their equipment to other towns, where they get more hours and higher pay, which has resulted in the city losing the “institutional knowledge of people behind the trucks.”
“If we have a high turnover and we’re not getting the same people year after year, it’s going to be a problem,” said Walsh. “At the end of the day, you have to retain contractors that have some knowledge of the city.”
Walsh said the DPW employees do a good job with plowing because they have that knowledge of the city, which is lacking with some of the private contractors.
“We need to look at retaining people, giving them the hours, rather than paying them more,” said Walsh.
Cyr agreed, saying that he thinks the city’s DPW staff are “unbelievable,” but the problem during this month’s massive snowstorm was that they couldn’t be everywhere.
“The problem was a lot of people were collecting a paycheck who don’t know what they’re doing,” said Cyr, who left the DPW commissioner with a word of caution.
“Hopefully it doesn’t snow for the rest of the season, but if it does, I don’t want to see you back here Andy,” he said.
