Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS — Cottonwood Heights has its first snow plow in hand as the city overhauls its approach to winter with a soon-to-be full-service public works department.
“The expectations of our citizens to have good equipment that is able to operate on our steep roads is very important,” assistant city manager Bryce Haderlie said Monday.
Haderlie said the large plow shared the same specifications as those used by the Utah Department of Transportation to clear highways, and three more just like it were on their way to the city.
In total, Haderlie said the city was acquiring 14 new plows of various sizes, in addition to leasing loaders during the winter to aid in winter cleanup.
“We have listened to the input from the citizens and how they felt about the services that were being provided,” Haderlie said.
Haderlie said city leaders began to look in detail at bolstering the public works department and conducting its own snow removal last October.
Snow removal in Cottonwood Heights has been a hot topic at times in recent years.
Given the city’s often hilly and curvy roads, the job has never been easy.
Resident Behruz Baraghoshi lives at the bottom of a steep cul-de-sac, and said problems can develop with just an inch of snow on the ground.
“The cars that do not have four-wheel-drive cannot get out of here,” he said.
Baraghoshi noted additional troubles when snowplows failed to clear his street in the days after large storms.
Related:
Cottonwood Heights mayor, residents unhappy with snow removal service
Although many neighborhood roads were still snowpacked Wednesday afternoon, many of the main roads were clear of snow in Cottonwood Heights.“We were stranded here,” he said.
Baraghoshi said several of the homeowners had started to leave their cars in a grocery store parking lot about 20 minutes away to ensure they would not get stuck on the street.
Cottonwood Heights had contracted with a private company the past three winters to provide snow removal services.
City officials described the company Monday as a good partner that had agreed to help through the transition.
“We’ve appreciated that working relationship that we’ve had with them as they’ve done our snowplowing and asphalt maintenance,” Haderlie said. “This is just another transition and development in the city as we went from a county area to a municipality, and we feel that those services can be provided best by our employees.”
The full-service public works department was expected to start up on July 1 and become fully operational by Oct. 1, Haderlie said, with the city also acquiring equipment to conduct summertime road repairs.
“Citizens seem excited to have the public works department operated out of the city,” he said. “We have had some people who have asked why we didn’t go back to the county. We evaluated that as part of this to make sure that we were going in the right direction, and we feel that having our department within the city gives us more versatility to provide those services where they need to be, and much more quickly than what we’ve had in the past.”
Haderlie said despite some up-front costs for equipment, the city determined its costs year-to-year would be comparable to what it was paying in its private contract.
Danny Martinez, who has 30 years of experience in public works in Salt Lake County and had spent time as a snow removal supervisor in the Cottonwood Heights area, came out of retirement to aid in the city’s efforts.
“We’re going to have more control,” Martinez said. “We’ll be able to, I think, have faster response times, and I think that will lead to lower costs.”
Andrew Adams is a multimedia journalist for KSL NewsRadio and KSL-TV. Email: aadams@ksl.com
