I have heard from many of you over the past two weeks, voicing your anger about the road conditions during the prolonged snowstorm. I share your frustration and apologize for the difficulty in navigating around the city.

To make matters worse, garbage and recycling piles up and overflows its containers. My neighbors are upset with me as I explain that cul-de-sacs will be the very last streets plowed. My children voiced their displeasure that our Christmas celebration was postponed four days because family could not make it to our house on Education Hill.

What I can tell you is that City of Redmond employees have been working 24/7 since December 17th to plow and clean our streets. Is it enough? Obviously not. A major limiting factor to our service is that the City owns only three large plows/sanders and one smaller plow/sander for 100 miles of road. This level of equipment is generally sufficient for most years; however, a storm like this occurs about once every 25 years and the equipment level clearly fell short this time. You have my commitment to review the City’s response for lessons learned and to implement changes to our snow removal plan quickly.

I have been in touch with Waste Management representatives and they report trucks are out in full force this week. Some of their trucks have extra staff on board to help with any extra trash or hard to service containers. Waste Management asks for your patience as their crews work through the very real logistical complications associated with the sheer volume of material they expect to find at the curb.

On all these issues, I asked staff for a complete debriefing of what happened, what changes need to be made and how we can prevent similar problems in the future. We will provide the City Council with a report at the January 6th City Council meeting. We certainly can’t control the weather, but we can learn and make changes to our response. As soon as I have more information, I will report back to you and the Council on what steps and changes we are taking. This information will also be available on www.redmond.gov.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. Hearing from you has been painful but provides useful information that will help the City better respond to future storm events.