Mr. Mayor and city councilmen, have you looked at the mess on the city streets created by our latest storm? It shouldn’t take a storm like this to emphasize the need for a snow emergency ordinance. Now, I have been asking since I moved back to Albert Lea nine years ago, why this city has no snow emergency ordinance. Why is it that car owners can’t be told to park on one side or the other so plows can come through to clean? Perhaps you gentlemen should ride in those plows after a storm and see what it’s really like to try to plow streets with people parked anywhere they want.

As I said, I’ve asked this question many times and not one person has been courteous enough to tell me or the rest of this town why they don’t have any type of ordinance. Well, I’ll try this again, why isn’t there a snow ordinance? Someone says it’s too expensive. How is it too expensive? I’ve been told that the streets will be cleaned on another day when the cars have been moved. Well, that’s a pile of crap. We have residents on the block I live on who everytime it snows, park their car on the street in front of their house at the corner. Sometimes they even park on both sides of the street. They have a place to park in back, but never clean it out. Not once all winter has that corner been completely cleaned out. The plows have never come back, so the snow continues to creep further out into the street. Almost every person on my block has a driveway in the front or back of the house, yet some refuse to spend a little time parking their car in them so the plows can clean the street. I don’t use our driveway except during this period of time. It means having to clean out the driveway after every storm, but it means a cleaner and safer street.

I don’t know about other neighborhoods and the people who live there, but it’s no longer the courteous thing to think of your neighbors and get your car out of the road. We have one on our block who put his truck at the end of his driveway, in the street, so that the plow couldn’t push snow in the driveway. So we had his truck in the street, and then the neighbor directly across the street parked his car in the street. So when the plow tried to make a run through on Sunday, they couldn’t because the plow wouldn’t fit between these two vehicles. If smaller cities than Albert Lea can have a snow ordinance, why can’t this city? Let’s get with it Mr. Mayor and city councilmen. Let’s get some kind of ordinance in place. Do your job! Let these plow drivers do their job to the best of their ability by moving the cars.

Kathy Diaz

Albert Lea