Sounds like a job for:
Posted on 12/21/2006 8:31:19 AM PST by freedomdefender
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is in his office, dialing talk radio stations for interviews and defending the work of the city's snowplow fleet during Wednesday's blizzard.
He's about to head out for another trip around the city to check out the road conditions himself, but first he wants to see if someone can donate some sleds. Fast.
Hickenlooper wants to sponsor sledding at four parks around the city Thursday, serving hot chocolate and offering sleds to anyone who doesn't have them.
Wednesday's blizzard stranded thousands of travelers on highways and at the airport, virtually shut down government, businesses and shopping five days before Christmas and had the National Guard patrolling suburban highways in Humvees rescuing stranded motorists.
But the mayor doesn't want people to see the storm just as catastrophe. He's hoping that stories of people having fun in the snow will spread around the city.
Hickenlooper asks a staffer to contact the CEO of a large retailer he thinks might be willing to donate sleds. Then he dons a baseball hat and a wool dress coat over his suit before heading downstairs to his hybrid SUV.
"We should find where there's a silver lining," says Hickenlooper, an offbeat Democrat who got his start in public life as a brew-pub entrepreneur.
Denver political legend has it that at least one mayor -- Bill McNichols -- was booted from office for his slow response to a Christmas Eve blizzard in 1982. A successor, Mayor Wellington Webb, was blasted for failing to keep the airport roads clear in an 1997 snowstorm.
But Hickenlooper doesn't appear worried the sled strategy will backfire. The city's snowplows are going full-tilt, he says.
"We can't do any more than what we're doing on the streets. But for a few hundred dollars, not a lot of resources, I think we can let people have a chuckle," he says.
Hickenlooper has built his brief political partly on chuckles.
In his first try for public office in 2003, he made his mark with TV ads making light of the city's unpopularly high parking meter fees. Later, backing a bipartisan ballot initiative on the state budget, he appeared in an ad skydiving in a business suit.
Out on the streets Wednesday night, it's a little more serious. The mayor's Ford Escape slides a little trying to stop at some red lights. Main thoroughfares like Speer and Federal boulevards are still snowpacked but passable in four-wheel drive vehicles.
Then the mayor spots two teenage boys at the top of a steep hill. One is sledding and the other is riding a snowboard and he tells his driver to stop.
Hickenlooper gets out and talks to the boys about the conditions. Then he suggests they make some money by shoveling but he runs into more skepticism.
"When it stops snowing," one of the boys quips.
"It will stop snowing," the mayor said before heading back to his SUV.
The city's residential streets are in worse shape but Hickenlooper says the city can't get to them until the main streets are cleared, something he conceded probably wouldn't happen until Thursday, when the storm is forecast to slacken.
He vows to do what it takes, even if it means millions of dollars in overtime, to clear the streets on Thursday and Friday so businesses dependent on holiday shoppers can get back to normal.
"We have to make sure that the impact on small businesses is minimized," he said.
At a news conference later announcing the sled event, Hickenlooper defends the snow-clearing effort.
"We could have three times the number of snow plows and it wouldn't make any difference," he says. "This is nature throwing a full left hook to your chin and you've got to pull back and deal with it."
Here in Colorado, I've never seen a worse job of snow-plowing. I don't know why, and I'm not blaming anybody. But the snowplow guys really have had a bad time with this storm. The main streets are still bad, well over a day after the storm hit.
State sponsored sledding?
Sounds like a job for:
What was his name, again? Naginlooper? ;)
What--Americans be inconvenienced??!! Perish the thought!!
I wonder how many Kalifornia transplant 4WD SUVs (with street tires, of course) are in Denver ditches?
I prefer the PlowKing
Depends on the plan that the snowplow drivers must follow. They are just following directions.
I have friends that live in Reno Nevada. 2-3 years ago they had quite a bit of snow. The plowing plan was ridiculous and some main routes were done after secondaries, in some instances 2-3 days after the storm. The plowing also seemd haphazard. The public was furious. It was not the drivers fault. They were just following the plan.
The following winter another big storm hit. This time plowing went much better. Seems the public outcry made a difference the second time around.
Yeah..I was wondering if the toilets at the Airport are backing up yet? LOL.
Was there ice underneath or on top of the snow? Most snow plows in urban areas have rubber bits to prevent damaging the road. If there's a thick layer of ice on top of or underneath snow, a rubber bit does absolutely no good. We ran into this problem a few years ago at my workplace when we had freezing rain over a 6 inch base of snow.
Steel bits will cut into the ice but the plow has to be able to have them attached. Of course, if it wasn't for the eco-nazis we could just salt the crap out of the road in a emergency like this and have the roads open in a couple of hours.
Sleds should be RENTED, with the extra money going to pay for overtime on the pough crews' parts. Quick - break into that store and see if they have any sleds they can part with (even though nobody's there to ask)...
Oooops... This is Denver, not LA.
POUGH! POUGH! MortMan ploughs into another direct hit on his spelling!
DOH!
I don't understand the salt ban in Colorado. Salt works fine back East. But a side effect is that you have a fair number of fine old classic cars on the road, much more than I see in the Northeast, that haven't rusted out.
A relative of mine drives a plow, so I'm not attacking snowplow drivers, who live a rough life during times like this.
I didn't get the feeling that you were attacking plow drivers, I just wanted to help educate people that may not know the circumstances involved. Many enviro-whackos, when informed of the consequences of their movement, rethink their positions. Well OK not many, but a couple of the ones with critical thinking skills.
"I wonder how many Kalifornia transplant 4WD SUVs (with street tires, of course) are in Denver ditches?" LMAO
I believe the Canadian province of Alberta implemented a salt ban some years ago to reduce the number of vehicle-animal collisions in the winter time. Apparently deer and elk would congregate on roads in the winter to eat the salt.
Seems appropriate for such a vanilla city ;-)
Kills roadside trees.
Were they waiting for the winds to die down before plowing? If so, I can understand that.
The streets around Boulder are in a mess. No Postal service yesterday and likely none today either. A lot of the malls had to close down early yesterday. This last week before Christmas is make or break for some retailers.
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