Snow Removal Almost Completed

Saturday - February 13: While His Honor, the Mayor, was expressing his frustration with the media coverage about the best high school basketball in the area we were able to get an up-date on Wellsville's snow removal efforts.

On Thursday we were told that the clean up efforts were called to a halt around 11 o'clock Thursday morning. They started this past Monday bringing Wellsville's Minor Supply & Pusateri Excavating in to remove much of the snow clogging our streets. Unfortunately many of our village streets were laid out back in the horse & buggy days of the 18th Century. Our fore fathers didn't plan for 21st Century cars & trucks. Many of our streets are narrow and the recent snow fall presented a real safety hazard.

Crews worked practically around the clock from Monday until Thursday morning. With the contractors, fuel, food & over-time the costs were mounting up. It is hoped we will eventually be reimbursed by FEMA but that is time consuming. It takes time to get repaid even though our county was declared in a state of emergency. According to a Tom Giambroni report in yesterday's MJ the whole state has to qualify with at least $14 million in snow removal costs. Even if that occurs the Governor has to declare that Ohio is in a state of emergency. To our knowledge Strickland hasn't done that yet.

For Wellsville the bills for the snow removal are being paid mostly from the Village Permissive Fund. Folks have to be paid for their goods & services. Money for the Permissive Fund comes from part of the fees we pay for our license plates. By state law it can only be used for streets.

According to Mayor Joe Surace the Village Permissive Fund was getting dangerously low with the clean up. With uncertainty about being paid back there was no choice but to call a stop. After Surace announced that early Thursday WPD Chief Joe Scarabino took him on a tour of what didn't get cleaned up. It was decided to have Pusateri come back for a couple of more streets that were determined to be a real serious safety hazard. That was done Thursday night into Friday morning.

Surace told us that most of the main streets have been cleared. Concentrated efforts were given to streets that have a lot of tractor trailer & school bus traffic. They were forced to miss many of the side streets and those less traveled simply because of the money situation. The Mayor said he apologizes to the Village residents in those areas.

If you know Joe, you know he hates to leave a job half done. Tomorrow is a holiday for Village workers but on Tuesday the Street Dept. is going to devote their shifts to 18th St. & Clark Ave. from Aten to the Intermodal Park. Parts of those two streets are pictured above.

We talked to many Wellsville folks about the snow removal. Everyone we talked to have had nothing but high praise for what was done. As we mentioned previously everyone felt it was money well spent. For us, personally, we were very encouraged to see how everything came together and everyone pitched in to make the best of a bad situation. If the Governor and FEMA doesn't come through we're going to have to live with some pot holes on down the road. The NWS isn't forecasting temperatures for our region to be above freezing for the next seven days. Thankfully they aren't calling for any significant snow fall in that time frame.

Thanks to everyone that pitched in and to our Village officials and personnel for being proactive with all that was done. With what has been accomplished and a little help from Ma Nature we're going to get through this.

In the meantime T H I N K S P R I N G!

ole nib