Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Street Department deserves praise


Ketchum Street Department employees deserve praise for the hard work and long hours they put in plowing the streets of Ketchum. They sometimes work 14-hour days and 70-plus hours a week plowing snow. They plow snow from about 1 a.m. till 9 a.m. and then spend the rest of the day repairing and maintaining the equipment to get ready for the next night. Christmas, New Year's, it doesn't matter. It snows and off to work they go.

If Ketchum had no downtown and no on-street parking, they could plow all day, but that's not the case. Highway 75 is plowed all day because there is no on-street parking. It is simply not safe or practical to plow Ketchum's core streets during the day when cars and pedestrians are all over the place. The large wheel loaders weigh 75,000 pounds with a 10-foot tall snowplow. You couldn't see or stop for pedestrians. Talk about unsafe.

The next problem would be that if the streets were plowed, we would end up with all the parked cars trapped behind 4- to 5-foot berms of snow. Now the core of Ketchum can't be plowed until all the cars are towed or shoveled out from the berms.

This may be incomprehensible to a retired attorney from Santa Barbara. It's just a fact of life in snow country that things may be a little rough going when it snows. We came for the snow and shouldn't be complaining about the snow. The best thing to do on one of these snowy days is to ride the bus to Baldy.

Nate Norris

Bellevue




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