Walters didn’t see salt trucks in south OKC
Oklahoma City Councilman Brian Walters, who represents Ward 5 on the city’s south side, suggested at this week’s city council meeting that the streets in his area were neglected during last weekend’s winter storm.
Salt trucks are loaded at the Oklahoma City's maintenance facility at SW 15 and Portland on Jan. 28. Photo By Paul Hellstern, The Oklahoman
Walters suggested that because he didn’t personally see city trucks salting the roads, they weren’t given any attention. City staff members said south side snow routes were salted and got just as much attention as those in other parts of the city.
The city has a map of its snow routes on its Web site. Because the city doesn’t budget enough money to salt every street, these snow routes get almost all the attention during and immediately following a major snow storm.
Street Maintenance Superintendent Mike DeGiacomo assured me all of the snow routes got the same amount of attention during the most recent winter weather. The city sends circulates trucks on the routes as often as possible during a storm. With 1,100 lane miles of snow routes to get to, streets may not be salted as often as residents would like, but crews do the best they can.
The ice storm hit Oklahoma City Thursday morning and continued all day Friday. Walters insisted that the southern portion of Western Avenue, which is a snow route, wasn’t salted or plowed at all until Saturday evening. Not true, according to DeGiacomo. He said appearances can be deceiving.
Ward 5 Councilman Brian Walters
Salt helps to melt snow and ice already on the street, but with snow continuing to fall all day Friday, a road salted multiple times could look untouched hours later.
Walters’ comments are reminiscent of a historical north/south divide that once divided the city council. During the early 1980s especially, feuds between northside and southside council members were common and divisive. City leaders tried to reject that mentality as the first MAPS plan unfolded, and the north/south divide has been virtually non-existent since I’ve covered the city since 2003.
This isn’t the first time Walters has tried to revive the provicncial attitude shortly after he was elected in 2007 as the city was preparing a general obligation bond issue for voters.
Walters complained that his ward wasn’t getting its share of the money for road projects. City officials said projects were included based on need. Unlike other areas that got more attention in the bond issue, nearly all the section line roads in Ward 5 were already four lanes and in generally good condition.
Other council members and Mayor Mick Cornett are protective of the unity the city has maintained in recent years and were not pleased with Walters criticism of the bond issue.
I wonder if city staff members will offer to let Walters ride along as the roads are salted in his ward the next time winter weather hits.
- Staff Writer Bryan Dean
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Comments
I can’t say that I agree on S. Western not being plowed south of 134th because I didn’t go that far south, but during my outing on Sat. the streets south of 104th and down to 134th between Santa Fe and I-44 were terrible. Of course, my first stop was in Moore and I then came west, and the streets in Moore were nearly completely cleared. It was evident when I left Moore city limits and entered into OKC limits. But, we were the ones wanting out of the house and were out running around in it!
Funny how it is only a provincial attitue when it’s south Oklahoma City. The same attitude is not applied to issues raised by those representing northeast Oklahoma City. Really what the mayor and others mean by unity is sit down and shut up when it comes to the needs of south Oklahoma City. In the last bond issue alot of the funds also went to beautificaiton projects in addition to road repairs. How is it the other quadrants of the city had almost exactly the same needs based on the amounts allocated but south oklahoma city only had half? It wasn’t about need it was about political power.
Also interesting that this article comes out with a biased negative light for Councilman Walters, and Cornett and others as unifiers. The timing should not be considered a coincidence either, with the upcoming city council election. Funny, too, how I just finished a “survey” call this evening with very obvious inferences to what an upstanding citizen Walter’s opponent is, with Mayor Cornett’s name dropped for good(?) measure, and even a guarded reference to the Tea Party in Oklahoma City. I was not fooled.
If Walters wants to find out where the snow trucks really went, he can do what former Oklahoman reporter Ryan McNeill and I did in 2006: Get the GPS data from the GPS units on the city snow plows and import that data into a mapping program to see if the proper routes were followed. Using that data, McNeill and I found that the city plowed routes as it promised it would after a 2006 snowstorm. You can read that story here: http://www.newsok.com/article/2986754