“We were prepared,” Mayor Parker insisted at a press conference earlier this week. It had been 11 days since “Snowmageddon;” at least five inches of snow and ice have been sitting on the ground for over a week — the longest local stretch in 16 years, according to the National Weather Service.

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Side streets are still not passable; cars are still plowed in. People are pissed. Like this amazing North Philly woman, whose profane Network-like I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Anymore spirit just might speak for more residents than Parker realizes:

She is all of us
by
u/mikeyv683 in
philadelphia

First, I totally want to hang with this woman. Love how she interrupts her rant to thank the snowplow driver — calling him “baby” — before returning to her attack on Parker when she realizes the truck has no city markings. Second, the reason the clip has gone viral is that it touches a nerve: Two weeks after the storm, snow removal remains frustratingly inequitable.

It’s a reminder that, while Minnesota Mayor (and Villanova law grad) Jacob Frey deals with some much-publicized civic unrest, a different kind of ice has historically been the most potent form of mayoral kryptonite. In 1979, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic was famously upset at the polls by Jane Byrne after botching the response to a 20-inch blizzard. Bilandic didn’t just fail to plow; public transportation stalled, leaving residents stranded in the cold for days. Ever since, Bilandic’s political demise has served as a cautionary tale for every big-city mayor.

In 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plummeted in the polls after he vacationed at his home in Bermuda while his city’s botched cleanup led to TV news footage of ambulances stuck in the snow. That same year, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl was also on vacation when a storm hit, yet city workers somehow managed to clear his street while the rest of the city remained buried. That same storm prompted Philly’s own Chris Matthews to eviscerate Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty on national TV, ultimately helping to seal Fenty’s political fate: “Why can’t a government town do a government job?” Matthews spat out. “It looked like Siberia without the Siberian discipline. We had the weather of Buffalo with the snowplowing capability of Miami.”

Today, other mayors are receiving similar crash courses in the politics of snow. In New York, Zohran Mamdani is learning on the job. He was everywhere during the storm, flashing that pristine smile of his in interview after interview. Video was even posted of the mayor shoveling a Brooklyn street. But outer-borough residents complain they haven’t seen plow trucks anywhere near as often as Manhattan or Brooklyn; worse, 14 dead bodies have been recovered, many of them homeless people — a tragic echo of the 42 deaths under Mayor John Lindsay during a 1969 storm. Celebrities like Michael Rapaport and Debra Messing have blasted the new mayor for being all sizzle and no street-clearing, as have even his left-leaning allies.

In Pittsburgh, new Mayor Corey O’Connor also had a tough week. When the storm hit, 37 plows were found to have been broken down. Side streets weren’t plowed because drivers hadn’t been taught how to navigate them.

You can’t plan the weather, but you can proactively manage its political ramifications.

By comparison, Parker has fared better— but problem spots remain. (She was notably booed at Tuesday night’s Flyers game.) At her press conference, the Mayor made her case, noting that the City had deployed a record 800 pieces of snow equipment and brought in a snow-melting machine from Chicago. To her credit, she has engaged private snow-removal contractors — perhaps like the one our favorite North Philly resident caught on her phone. Parker has also braved the ire of District Council 33 — the municipal workers union she tangled with last summer, and with whom she still has a frayed relationship — by hiring some 300 “same-day pay and work” laborers at $25 an hour to shovel sidewalks.

Standing alongside the Mayor was Carlton Williams, the City’s first-ever Director of Clean and Green Initiatives. Traditionally, snow emergencies fall under the City’s managing director — the City’s de facto COO. However, Managing Director Adam Thiel has until recently been on paid military leave, earning his full $300,000 salary while getting paid more taxpayer money for a secret deployment somewhere else (all while earning approximately $300,000 more in outside consulting income.) I honor his military and public service, but if you can’t dig your car out a week after a snowstorm, you might wonder where the hell the guy is who used to handle that for you.

Under Parker, the sanitation department has moved into Williams’ portfolio. So you also might just wonder about the guy who is now charged with removing your snow. “The Mayor really likes Carlton,” one insider tells me, even though Williams — a Kenney administration holdover — was arguably the least impressive of her hires.

Remember when trash was piling up on city streets during the Covid lockdown? Williams, then Kenney’s Streets Department commissioner, penned an excuse-laden Inquirer op-ed explaining why the City had been so derelict in picking up residents’ refuse: His excuses included workforce shortages, more residential waste, even “torrential rains.”

All true, but somewhere Harry Truman was gyrating in his grave. A classic case of buck-passing; not a single solution proffered. That’s who now is charged with one of the most politically dicey tasks in government. Before the storm, Williams warned residents they’d face $300 fines if they didn’t shovel within six hours. Yet, a week later, his own team still hadn’t cleared City-owned parks.

Even worse? The NBC10 report of a City snowplow driver who posted footage of himself maniacally laughing as he purposely dumped snow on top of cars in Kensington, burying them. “Happy snow day, motherfuckers,” this jerk of a city worker shouted. “We tearing this shit up. Allegheny don’t need to go nowhere. Go in the fucking house!”

That’s your $6.8 billion taxpayer funded budget at work, Philly. Williams’ response? To say his team has identified this perpetrator and will handle the matter internally. Why not charge this city worker with a crime — theft of services or harassment comes to mind — and send a signal that you’re on your taxpayer’s side?

There are better ways to do this

At least Parker is willing to try some stuff, like paying those laborers in the face of union opposition. But is Williams going to come up with innovations that move the needle?

Look at Kansas City, Missouri, for example, which won an American Public Works Association Excellence in Snow and Ice Control Award for its digital technology solutions. There, every snowplow is equipped with tablets that guide drivers through optimized routes and enables them to photograph and report road hazards in real-time. The program has saved millions and increased citizen satisfaction by 17 percent.

The city of Holland, Michigan boasts of the nation’s largest heated road network, with over 190 miles of pipes beneath city streets melting snow before it accumulates. Laying the tubing cost all of $9 million and has more than paid for itself since the late 90s. It was the brainchild of a local entrepreneur, who seeded the project with an initial investment of $250,000. Rather than starting at “no” or stalling over union objections, city government made a first-of-its-kind investment, despite the fact that there was no track record to point to. They saw it not just as a quality of life cure, but also as an engine of economic development. It gave the city an amenity that allowed it to better compete — and it is expanding still.

Perhaps Holland’s solutions aren’t a perfect fit for Philly, but its heated network is a prime example of the type of forward-thinking leadership we’re desperate for — and that Parker seems open to. She just needs the staffing around her to help dream up and implement such big picture ideas.

Meantime, our Mayor would do well to resist coming off as defensive. In St. Louis, then-Mayor Tishaura Jones gave herself a B- last year after a storm kept residents inside for six days. The electorate didn’t agree with Jones’ stubborn self-assessment; in fact, voters were pretty pissed off by it. She finally apologized for her performance in an election-season debate, but by then it was too late. She was voted out of office in a landslide.

Major snow events can permanently wound — or even end — mayoral careers, perhaps even more than rising homicide rates. Cherelle Parker’s reelection is two years away; she will most likely cruise to a second term. But will an event emerge that diminishes her and imperils her agenda? She should take heed: You can’t plan the weather, but you can proactively manage its political ramifications.

Correction: Snowmaggedon 2026 took place 11 days ago. 

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