Whitefish eyes changes to snow plowing

Thoughts of snow covering Whitefish’s roadways may seem far off, but the city of Whitefish Public Works Department is already planning for next winter.

And they’re looking at ways to improve plowing in the city. Public Works Director Craig Workman recently presented a preliminary proposal to the City Council looking at modifying how streets and alleys in the city would be plowed.

“Coming off a significant snow year, we had a fair number of complaints,” Workman said. “We know we can do a better job.”

In order to allow for snow removal, Whitefish currently follows what the city calls an “avenues in the afternoon” rule for parking. In the downtown area there is no parking from 2:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. and on residential streets cars can’t park for more than 24 hours.

City ordinance requires that vehicles be removed from roadways running east and west — primarily streets — in the morning, and north and south — primarily avenues — in the afternoon. Vehicles that are not moved are subject to towing.

But Workman says the current program just simply doesn’t work because it doesn’t follow the same direction crews plow the streets.

“It’s apparent our parking regulations don’t work,” he said. “Cars get plowed in and cars are parked all over so that we’re not able to plow curb to curb. The key is try to turn the streets back into streets again.”

After looking at a number of other cities’ regulations, the Public Works department has narrowed in on implementing a system similar to the one used by the city of Madison, Wisconsin.

Madison uses “alternate side parking” seven days a week, regardless of weather conditions from November to March. Cars are required to park on the even house-numbered sides of the street on even number calendar days, and the odd house-numbered sides of the street on odd number calendar days.

“This would dictate the way we plow based on the parking,” Workman said. “It would take some getting used to because Whitefish has been used to liberal parking regulations.”

Workman said Whitefish would likely run the alternate side parking rule from Nov. 1 through April 1.

He noted that the city would have to put up signs explaining the parking rules and also launch an education campaign to prepare drivers for the change that could occur as early as this fall. The change is only being considered for the residential streets and downtown parking rules would remain the same.

Workman said he’d like to have a new ordinance in place by November and expects to return to Council for a vote on changes as soon as possible.

Another issue, Workman also noted, is that city crews often aren’t able to get to plowing alleys, which are a lower priority, before the next snowfall happens.

“We don’t have the crew to get to the alleys by the time it freezes and then by the end of the season there are large ruts,” he said.

Workman said in the Public Works fiscal year 2019 budget he will be recommending that the city hire subcontractors to plow alleys.

In Columbia Falls, the city plows after four inches of snowfall and all streets are cleared as soon as possible.

Kalipsell breaks its plowing out in residential areas by clearing avenues on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and streets on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.