READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council at its Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday discussed a proposal to revise the city\u2019s snow emergency plan, which received less-than-favorable feedback from the city\u2019s public works director.<\/p>\n
Up for consideration is a proposed requirement for vehicles to be removed from the streets designated as snow emergency routes whenever 3 or more inches of snow are predicted.<\/p>\n
The idea would be to allow the city to plow the streets curb to curb.<\/p>\n
Kyle Zeiber, director of public works, did not favor the proposed change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have some trepidation with this proposal, and we see some potential issues with the plowing or the snow removal from curb to curb during the storm,\u201d Zeiber said. \u201cWe’re not sure what your end game is out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m wondering why you want to change the ordinance so that we have to plow curb to curb when there’s 3 inches of snow,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Clerk Linda Kelleher explained the topic stems from last winter\u2019s snowstorm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a prediction of a large snow event, and we started doing the no-parking on the snow routes and then you kind of went about it systematically, block by block, and council was completely blown away with how fabulous places like North 13th Street looked,\u201d Kelleher said. \u201cIt made such a huge difference without those snow bunkers on those busy streets, where there’s normally parking stress every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zeiber said the idea of having to plow curb to curb would create havoc with public works to move cars and coordinate with police to tow cars just to plow 3 inches of snow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s not, in our opinion, in the best interest of the residents,\u201d Zeiber added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were to concentrate on snow emergency routes going curb to curb, there’s going to be streets and side streets that don’t get touched for long periods of time because we’re going to spend an inordinate amount of time clearing snow on the snow emergency routes,\u201d Zeiber said.<\/p>\n
Council President Donna Reed said Zeiber\u2019s concerns are why council wanted to meet with public works before any action would be taken to move the proposed ordinance forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re very open to everything,\u201d Reed said. \u201cThis is simply a draft. And again, talking about it now is so much better than waiting, which is what has happened over the years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re policymakers,\u201d Reed added. \u201cWe’re not out there doing the work that you’re doing, which is why we want to have these kinds of conversations \u2014 not to override you \u2013 but to find out how we can work best together to help us all and help the populace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zeiber also addressed the project last winter when snow was removed and hauled away, clearing main streets curb to curb.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur main focus when it’s snowing is plowing,\u201d Zeiber said. \u201cIt’s not removing snow. That’s a secondary thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve got to keep everything open throughout the city; big streets and small streets,\u201d he said. \u201cThen we step back and assess where we’re at and if the accumulation is that great that we have mounds of snow along the parked cars in the corners, then we start moving into a snow removal operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t believe this needs to be revised,\u201d Zeiber concluded. \u201cI don’t feel that it is in the best interest or safety of our citizens. With 3 inches of snow, I think it’s going to be more problem than if we just left it the way it is now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Truck restrictions<\/p>\n
In another matter, council reviewed a proposed ordinance to be voted upon next Monday.<\/p>\n
The proposed ordinance would amend the city code to restrict truck traffic on the following streets:<\/p>\n
400 and 500 blocks of Pansy Street.<\/p>\n
On River Road, between the Route 12 interchange to the Muhlenberg Township boundary.<\/p>\n
On Bingaman Street, between South Seventh\u00a0Street and South Eighth\u00a0Street.<\/p>\n
The ordinance would also increase the fine to $150 from the current penalty of $25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council at its Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday discussed a proposal to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[13521,2716,5194,79541,128,1095,130,129,117850,29512],"class_list":["post-282222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-director-of-public-works","tag-donna-reed","tag-kyle-zeiber","tag-linda-kelleher","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-council","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-public-works-director","tag-snow-emergency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}