To plow or not to plow? Teton County considers new criteria - East Idaho News
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To plow or not to plow? Teton County considers new criteria

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DRIGGS — To change county snow plow routes there first needs to be an official and fair way to evaluate them, says the county public works department.

“It’s hard to change the map,” said Public Works Director Darryl Johnson. “If we want to change the map, we need to put it before the commissioners and make a motion to amend the map… but we don’t have any official criteria for doing it.”

Since Johnson took over the director role, the map has only been changed once, in December 2014.

Evidence suggests the current snow plow map has become outdated.

“There really are examples that come to mind out in the west side of the valley where we are plowing to a farm house that nobody lives in anymore,” said Johnson. “We used to plow out there because there was an elderly couple and the county felt they needed to do it. That’s the way the county was.”

Snow plows also go through areas the county is not responsible for plowing.

“Some of our snow plow routes are through subdivisions, for whatever reason,” said Johnson. “For most subdivisions, it’s the subdivision’s HOA[Home Owner Association] requirements to plow the roads.”

Examples of subdivisions on the plowing routes, according to a public works department report, include Indian Sunset Rd, Grand Teton Rd, N 1500 E, Grandview Dr., Valley Dr., Bainbridge Dr., Jackalope Way, Quaking Aspen Dr. and Pioneer Trail.

“These are all roads that rank quite well due to the density of homes, but the responsibility to maintain them does not lie on the County,” the report continues.

Draft criteria to help update the map have been under discussion at least since 2009.

“This commission has been talking about changing the county [plowing] criteria for eight years—since I’ve been here,” said County Prosecutor Kathy Spitzer. “The taxpayers have been covering these costs for a really long time.”

But the process for getting commission approval has been slow, including for this commission.

“If we have been plowing roads, we can’t just shut them off in a year… We need to apply some logic and give everybody plenty of time,” said Commission Chairman Bill Leake. “We need to be open minded and shouldn’t do something that would harm somebody or put them in a tough situation.”

For the public works department, getting new criteria is the only way to even begin applying changes.

“There’s no way it will change this winter,” said Johnson. “The point I’m trying to make is we’ll just keep kicking the can down the road… My recommendation is that we accept this new scoring sheet. That way the wheels are in motion and something can begin to change.”

Change could be much faster if it needed to be, according to Spitzer.

“There’s no law that says we have to plow county roads,” she said. “I agree cutting them off in December or January wouldn’t be good, but if you tell them a year in advance? If they had all spring, summer and fall to figure it out?

Any and all changes are on the table, but that’s why the public works department want to get the criteria right.

“That’s the problem with what is called the grandfather clause. There’s nothing that says we have to [apply it]. If we adopt a new criteria, that’s the new criteria for choosing where to snow plow,” said Johnson before the commission.

To prepare the new criteria for adoption, the public works department is going to evaluate its impact on the existing map.

“We need to truth it,” said Johnson. “It’s quite an effort to take this snow plow map and score every section and rank them so we can understand how this works and what needs to change.”

The draft criteria, which are available at the public works department, are based on a criteria sheet put together and approved by neighboring Fremont County.

“It is much quicker than the previous version to pre-screen road segments as to whether they may qualify for plowing,” claimed the report. “It allows input from the Road & Bridge Supervisor to determine how difficult a road segment is to plow. Since our Road & Bridge crew see these roads on a daily basis and are responsible for snow removal, it only makes sense to use their knowledge and expertise.”

There are currently eight snow plow drivers. Collectively they plow approximately 265 miles of county roads.

To add to the routes, the department says they’ll have to find other places to cut.

“We’ve got eight people out plowing and they each have eight to 12 hour routes,” said Johnson. “The only way to change it is to add more people and more equipment, or change the current routes.”

This story originally appeared in Teton Valley News. It is posted here with permission.

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