The bar just keeps getting lower...

Years ago, when I was in Rochester, the city had (maybe they still do?) a snowplow that was just wide enough for sidewalks, and it kept sidewalks clear.

Why can't Buffalo do that, to keep people from having to walk down the middle of the street? Haven't we had enough pedestrian deaths already?

'jes wonderin'

There is a lot to gripe about in this city, but plowing is not one of them. I have lived in many cities that get a fair amount of snow and nobody does it quite like Buffalo.

We just went through what amounts to two blizzards in three days and other than having to shovel my car out for a few minutes each time I went out, I would say that overall I found the major roads to be pretty well cared for.

For $350,000, he should be able to get an amazing home in the city with a driveway that he can then pay to have plowed or get his young butt out there and shovel it himself. What exactly is the problem? It is city living and with that comes a small amount of inconvenience. As someone who has never had a driveway in Buffalo, I have learned to deal with it and find it to be only a small nuisance from time to time.

Yes taxes are high, yes our city government is bloated, but to complain about plowing and then expect BRO to cover it seems a little out of whack. Regardless of what you or Donn Esmonde think, I'm going to stick it out in Buffalo.

Bring on the snow.

The condition of streets in Buffalo 36-48 hours after the storms is completely deplorable. No question. Small nuisance? I don't think that navigating my way through the sandy slush day after day when all it would take is one plow down the streets to clean things up. And I am mostly talking about the main streets - I could deal with getting off my little sidestreet (which should still really be plowed by now), but the major arterials are an inexcusable mess. The time it takes for cars to go through green lights (that are never properly synched) or stop signs, backing cars up for blocks (and blocks and blocks in some cases) in inexcusable this long after the storm. Again, no question.

I love living in the city, but knowing that I shouldn't have to deal with the streets in this condition two days later is becoming infuriating.

You can not put all of the blame on the city or the snow plow drivers. People who do not move their cars per the parking directives cause a portion of the problems as well because snow plows can not make it down many of the city side streets.

Hate to burst your bubble....but the suburbs have been pretty ****ty and unplowed since friday too

I think City officials really meant 90% of the City was unplowed. Did they think we wouldn't notice?

http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/12/hey-mayor-brown-shovel-this.html

Parked cars are a good excuse in a few cases, but Monday it was obvious that wasn't the whole explanation - far from it. By Monday morning and afternoon there should have been a lot more progress than there was on all kinds of streets - commercial, main residential, sides. Even Monday night and today they haven't caught up, and the snow ended Sunday. It doesn't seem worse than when Masiello was mayor, so I don't think the Brown admin worsened it, but hasn't improved since then either.

This is the kind of thing the city should spend more of its $$$ on (more plows and or more plow drivers), compared to some other things ($190,000 recent gift to a restaurant, or $60,000 or for bike racks, ...on and on). They should prioritize better. More focus should be on basics. Snow plowing is a very basic need here.

What world are you living in? Look at the picture, the road is plowed, the problem is the cars parked on the street! Not all side streets have enough room for all the cars so the Plow has to make one pass. A lot of these houses are duplexes and have 4 cars per house.

That being said I live on a side street and the only issue is the idiots who have there own driveways, but refuse to park in them or park across the street in the parking lot. Either A: They can't plan ahead and arrange their cars for the morning commute with their roomate/spouse, B: they don't want to shovel their own driveway, C: don't want to walk across the street to the parking lot.

Because of these people I have to shovel an extra 5 feet past my driveway because the plows can't swerve around parked cars. But because this is Buffalo and it's a part of life I don't bitch.

If you live on a street with limited parking and grew up in the area this shouldn't be a shock, deal with it.

Most suburbs don't have parking issues. If it's a duplex there's 2 driveways, if it's a single home the drive can usually fit 4 cars and even more with a garage. This is apples to oranges. In fact the only time I see cars parked on the street is when there's a party. Maybe we should cancel Christmas this year so no one gets stuck!

I can't wait until summer when people on this site complain about the heat, and how the city should had out free air conditioners.

The city is certainly inefficient and possibly corrupt BUT lets face the real facts here.

Buffalo has lost more than half its population in the last 40 years but it still has the same number of streets to maintain. Buffalo has faced massive disinvestment over that same period. Its tax base has been drastically reduced as wealth has moved to the suburbs. It has been left with a population that is very poor and dependent for the most part. So Mr. 10,000 in taxes is forced to shoulder the burden of many thousands who pay little or no taxes in the city. Add to this the fact that the county does not plow any of their own roads in the city (as they do in the suburbs - as a matter of fact the county plows all the roads in some towns)

This is the result of a WNY community that continues to add infrastructure even as its population declines. Do you think that the highly vaunted Amherst snow removal team could do a better job than Buffalo given the same resources?

I think not.

Oh,

Also I did a little check on that $10,000 tax number. The highest I found among new listings was just over $5000 - and good luck trying to find a house over 300K. There are not many.

http://www.buffaloniagarahomes.com/static/?CFID=864285&CFTOKEN=88060469

My wife and I live in the EV, have a driveway, and neither of our lives have been greatly inconvenienced beyond the regular inconvenience of snow in Buffalo. It hadn't even occured to me to be mad at the City for anything. "Ineptitude" never occured to me. The idea of suburbanites laughing at us for accepting such mediocrity is bizarre paranoia. I don't care if you're in the business of selling things - you have "the grass is greener everywhere else" delusions. None of the roads in the EV I've driven on are impassable. I've yet to get stuck anywhere. I haven't even so much as started skidding while making a left hand turn off my street.

It sounds like your clients are people who "want" to live in the city, BUT - the roads aren't plowed, the schools are bad, there's too much crime, there's too many poor people, the government is too inept, there's not enough parking, the backyards aren't big enough, etc. So, if only the City would fix all these things, then they would move there. But, until then, they won't move to the city. It's really too bad, because they "wanted" to live here. Right?

My wife and I really wanted to live in the suburbs, but there wasn't much within walking distance of most of the houses we looked at and there were no sidewalks anyway, so we couldn't walk anywhere without fearing for our lives - ESPECIALLY when it snows! So we were forced to live in the city. It's too bad, because we really wanted to live in the 'burbs. The 'burbs should change to accomodate our needs so we'll move back. Sounds funny when someone says it that way, doesn't it?

What I really want to know is what about the people who ride bikes....just what about them?

There is blame to put on both sides on this one. The city's plows have gone down my street at least twice. This is good. But neither time did they ever come close to the pavement.. This is bad. What is the point of plowing if you are going to leave the plows 6" above the pavement and therefore just create a ton of slush and wasted salt.

There are also areas where the city has truly left untouched for some reason. The University Heights, west of Main street as the AnswerLady points out on her blog. This is inexcusable.

Yeah the streets are also bad because people plow their driveways into the street. This creates a huge extra amount of snow into streets that get spread around. So they also think a street might be in better condition than it is because of this.

I think with the 1, 2 punch that we got they did a pretty good job. Especially as STEEL pointed out, they get help form the county.. which the city doesn't. We have to do it all on our own time and dime.

Also, where are you going to find a $350K house in WNY with taxes that aren't between $7,000 and $10,000? Northtowns, Southtowns, City...it won't matter. At that price point, you're paying rent to NYS on top of your mortgage. I mean, I just found a house listed at $349,000 in Tonawanda with yearly taxes of $12,000! Although, I did also just find a house listed at $369K in North Buffalo with taxes listed at $2,400. Of course, that number will likely be going up soon, but those are the highs and the lows according to a random sampling on real estate website.

Do you have proof that this reader submission actually came from a real estate agent?

One of the issues we are experiencing is the fact that the salt laid down did not work due to the cold temperatures. In fact, it caused what I refer to as "loam" snow - slikkery and foamy - this creates more mess and density which eventually translates into ice.

Add this to the folks who don't move their vehicles and those who do, but throw the snow back into the street - and we continue to crap in our own backyards on this one, folks.

I think a big issue as well is with people leaving their vehicles in the street. If everyone who has access to a driveway or a parking area used it and didn't leave their cars parked on the street it would make it that much easier to get the plows down the streets. Now I know this isn't possible in all areas of the city but in South Buffalo I notice that there are a lot of cars in the streets where the houses have driveways. Just my thoughts.

In the EV it looked decent Saturday and Sunday. Where I noticed the worst problems was where there was a lot of illegally parked cars. By Monday morning, once the cars were moved it was infinitely better. Maybe the city should have started towing all the illegal cars. The fines would have supplemented the plow's overtime. But I'm sure there would be BR post outraged at the city towing cars in such a trying and difficult time.

But how could people get their precious driveways plowed for them if they had their car in it.

Allentown is a mess. Partly because city workers dread one way streets, but mostly because theres so many idiots with cars. All it takes in one car on the wrong side of a one way street and on to the next one. There are cars around here that have not moved since friday. These lazy asses clearly have some other form of transportation and figure they ill get back to business when the snow melts. Besides that tho- theres still alot of cleanup in this neighborhood that can happen without cars in the way.

I myself have no off street parking. I think everyone needs to suck it up and dig their cars out asap. Theres people complaining how fast the city is to issue tickets for cars parked on the wrong side. Well I do not think they are issuing them fast enough. They are the prime reason streets are not getting plowed.

I agree that the City of Buffalo snow plowing system needs to be re-worked. Some of the Parkside neighborhood streets finally got plowed Monday evening at around 4:45. A suggestions to get the streets cleared...make sure your car is on the correct side of the street. This will ensure the streets get cleared properly when the plow comes!

Snow removal on side streets is a problem in virtually every city. I think Buffalo does a much better job than Albany for example. There are some small side streets there that would literally never see a plow(or salt for that matter) all winter.

You really can't compare the challenges of snow removal in the city to snow removal in the suburbs. Between the parking restrictions and the width of the roads themselves; it's just apples and oranges.

If we all rode bikes, walked, and took the metro everywhere then there wouldn't be a problem. I often read about how we have too many parking lots and how the charm of city living is not needing a car to get where you are going, so why is this a problem? More people should share cars while they walk, bus, or ride to work and to the stores. Then the city would only have to invest in clearing the sidewalks and could wait a few days before clearing the streets.

Ah the dream of new urbanism, mixed-use and built to the curb built environment without the need for private cars.

It is deplorable the condition of sidewalks and streets in the City> I live on North pearl above Virginia and it is a mess. My walk over to work along Virginia Street to Ellicott is void of maintenance forcing me to walk in the street at peril!

Mayor Brown needs to ensure that there is some mode of enforcement in place for sidewalk scofflaws. Maybe I'll stage an in the street accident and call Celino and Barnes!

not sure what constitutes the "elmwood village", but hoyt st was a disaster yesterday morning with numerous vehicles getting stuck in the middle of the street. at least i was able to walk to guercio's for quality eats!

Everyone seems to be focused on the cars as a problem - and they are in many cases. Why not do it like a truly progressive city - create public lots for parking. We certainly have enough vacant lots in Bufflo to do the job. The fact is Buffalo gets major snow storms on a regular basis and in reality we should be world class at removing snow. Instead we spend our money on usless employees - does the Mayor, Comptroller, Public Schools and Police Dept really need spokespersons. Maybe Peter Cuttler could earn his keep and drive a plow. We give our money away to the mega rich (Paul Snyder) or retired public employees and when its the taxpayers who are looking for basic services they (the over paid spokesperson) cry poverty. Byron Brown has only one goal - manipulate information to make him look good. Well it's painfully obvious that the Brown administration is clueless when it comes to basic services. Drive out Main St, cross Bailey Ave and enjoy clear pavement - it can be done if the city wanted to.

I actually found N Pearl to be pretty good with just a couple of problem properties messing it up for everyone. Virginia's sidewalk between Main and Washington doesn't shoveled at all.. never.

This is a problem all over the city, even on commercial strips. Elmwood actually does a good job but walking down hertel the last couple days can be dangerous. I think of myself a pretty sure footed and it is difficult for me. Which leads me to walk in the street. Don't get mad at those who walk in the street. Get mad at the property owners being negligent of their ownership duties and not shoveling.

Just got back from running errands and the side streets off Main in the Heights are a mess. They have seen one plow job if any. People are walking in the streets from here to Elmwood Ave. And we're back to that same old problem with the NFTA, none of the bus stops are cleaned off. People are standing in the streets trying to flag down the buses.

Bike racks are an important part for a functional city. They were money well spent. I have been able to bike into work every day without issue. In conclusion... buy a bike.

I don't see SUVs getting stuck on the unplowed side streets.

Did anyone actually NOT get to where they needed to be this weekend?

I had to be at work every night and managed to make it. It was slow going and a nuisance, but I made it with little difficulty in my old little sedan.

I haven't been able to park on my street where I normally do; I had to walk an extra two blocks, but I made it.

Maybe you had to push out car out along the way (and I bet some other Buffalonians stopped to help you too!), but I bet you made it too.

Nobody got stranded. I think that's pretty good.

Oh, what's that? You're behind on your Christmas shopping? Oh, yeah that does suck. But I think you'll manage.

DMZ, you're right in many cases people don't move their cars in 12-24 hrs of the first plowing as I wrote. What I meant and how should have written it was that often (including late Monday night) I saw first hand a quite a few blocks where most had moved their cars during the day and plows still hadn't made another pass. based on some comments here, that's till the case, or worse, on some streets. In blocks near where I live, 'most' do move their cars within 12-24 hours of the first plowing, but city-wide maybe not.

Today's Buffalo News picture page shows a car stuck Monday on Breckenridge which looks unplowed at that point. The front page quotes the EVA director saying Ashland Ave hadn't been plowed as of Monday and criticizing weekend plowing on Elmwood too:

http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/530964.html

'... "I still haven’t seen a plow on my street," said Justin Azzarella of Ashland Avenue. "Most of my neighbors are staying home because they can’t get out of their houses." ... Azzarella, executive director of the Elmwood Village Association, says the city also dropped the ball on plowing Elmwood Avenue, one of the city’s major retail centers. Elmwood was passable, he said, but the metered parking spaces were clogged with snow all weekend. "Absolutely," he said when asked if Elmwood Village businesses suffered because of the lack of parking. "This was the biggest shopping weekend of the year." ...'

I don't think plowing was awful this time, but the Reader Submission author's decription of it as mediocrity sounds right. On some streets pretty good, others lousy, many in between. If I lived on Hoyt St as bud_boomer does, or one of the Univ Heights streets AnswerLady mentioned, I'd say worse than mediocre.

Maybe the city sould buy some more plow equipment of varying sizes and try to improve plowing. I realize they'd need to cut spending elsewhere to pay for that, but probably there's some lower priority spending that could be reallocated in time for next winter.

my house is 325k on Chapin and my taxes were just reassessed at $11,450.. outrageous! we own a second home in Las Vegas that is worth $295k and our taxes are $1700 per year!!! this city is crazy

It should come as no surprise to anyone on this thread that Mayor Brown's street (Blaine) is down to the pavement. However, I was quite surprised that as of Monday afternoon, Crescent had maybe seen one plow (Deputy Mayor Steve Casey's street).

St. James has seen one plow since Friday, but I agree with many of the comments above that if these Lazy a-holes would move their cars, a plow may be able to get down. I saw the plow start to turn down my street, then he had to back out because of the cars parked on the wrong side.

Its snow, and its Buffalo, you can't set your expectations too high here people.

STEEL, OWN A HOUSE FIRST THEN U CAN TALK SMACK

Buffalo has no snow emergency plan. I own a home in Rochester as well (not that Rochchacha is better managed) but they have a color coded system for snow emergencies. It works pretty well. Buffalo has no system at all. During snow emergencies, in Rochester, cars are not allowed on most streets, others are sort of designated "parking" streets. That way, the more major and secondary streets can be plowed first, and then the side streets plowed more quickly, because cars aren't parked on many of them. Buffalo needs to get it together in this regard. Major city institutions (Buffalo State, Albright Knox) also don't plow their property or sidewalks, so I'd say a pretty major plan and educational program are in order. Byron has sunk thousands into that stupid CitiSTAT program, how about putting some of that toward reliable plowing service? Why not outsource it or privatize it if the city can't handle doing it well?

Well the city does have snow evacuation routes, which by default make them a higher priority than other routes. NO color coding needed, but the city also allows landlords and vehicles on the streets without ticketing them and causing half of the problem.

The apt. I live in is a perfect example. I live in a duplex in N. Buffalo. We are not allowed to park in the driveway, at all. Because he wants the plow to be able to clear it for his vehicles, which he keeps in the garage.

Now that forces our car into the street and a whole, empty driveways sits there, unused for 23 hours a day. Really stupid. Now we only own one car for two people.. most of the other apartments probably would have two cars,for two working adults, in the street, with a driveway that could hold 4 cars. THIS is why the streets don't get plowed because individuals would rather have their personal driveway taken care of than allow renters to park in them.

There are MANY driveways in the street unused, probably because of the same plowing issue. If we just shoveled our own driveways, Then cars in them wouldn't be a problem. But people and landlords contract it out which means no one can every use the driveways because the plow MIGHT show up... So the whole street suffers because of individuals.

This story seems either contrived, or just exaggerated. If a Professional looking to buy a $350,000 house has that much problem driving in snow then he needs to get used to living in WNY first. If I can navigate buffalo's streets without any problems in my ancient sub-compact car with worn tires, then I'd assume someone spending $350K on a house could afford 4-wheel drive... or at least snow tires!

I grew up south of the Southtowns where the snow hits the hardest. I remember watching people complain about the lack of plowing on the nightly news and my parents commenting that they were all just a bunch of whiners and the city was probably doing what it could to get the roads plowed.

I lived in VT for seven years before moving back and choosing to live in Allentown. Vermont uses sand instead of salt, the roads are horrible but I've never seen anything as bad as Buffalo. Maybe we ARE all just a bunch of whiners, like my parents said. However, when I drove to work on Monday, I ran seven stop signs and two red lights because if I stopped, I wouldn't have made it down the road. Meanwhile, at the corner of Richmond and Bryant, there was a plow truck... PARKED at 8:00 a.m. Seriously, I know everyone needs to sleep but where's the next shift? One swipe down the road next to the plow would have been enough to keep me from having the muffler system ripped off the bottom of my car.

since moving to albany nearly a decade ago i've often criticized their snow removal in comparison to buffalo's. however, it seems like they do a few things right here that buffalo could learn from.

1.) during a snow emergency all cars must be parked on the even side of the street from 8pm the 1st night of the emergency until 8pm the following night. then, for the next 24 hours all cars must be moved to the odd side of the street. this allows the plows to effectively clear both sides of the street to the curb within 48 hours of a major storm.

2.) since downtown albany is rather congested (many of the houses are 1800's brick row houses that share walls) you can imagine that there wouldn't be enough space for all the cars. to accomodate for this, the city provide special "snow emergency" lots. some of these are municipal lots and garages available free of charge. others are parks and playgrounds that are plowed out as makeshift lots.

3.) any cars that don't comply are towed. end of story.

sure, people whine about it, but they'll whine no matter what. the city announces these emergencies on it's website, on radio and tv, and through the neighborhood associations. if you don't get the message it's really your own fault. you have to know that any time there's a major storm, you need to find out if and when the emergency has been declared.

how about disgruntled plow drivers!

i parked in the church lot down the street (as did many others in my neighborhood) because the street was a mess and because i didnt want to block a city plow. I was respectful enough to park in the very back where he had already plowed, but he still wasnt happy and yelled at me to get out. After explaining the situation (i swear i didnt raise my voice) he agreed to let me stay.

fast forward a day, the jerk plowed me in from 4 directions. snow to the roof. took 2 hours to shovel out.

ok, ok...ha ha. he got me back, whatever.

fast forward another day. city plow still hasnt hit our street, its a mess. i HAD to park in the lot again. wouldnt you know this jerk gets me again! the bank was 6 feet deep, 3 ft high. as i'm shoveling out with the help of a neighbor he drives up again! only this time he's laughing and taking pictures.

bah humbug i guess.

i'm now parked in the street, if i'm in the way of a city plow then so be it...i tried.

The streets are not the only issue here. I just did some last minute shopping around and I must say that the sidewalks in North Buffalo are simply horrid. The side streets are not so bad. Most people do to a good job about making them passable with the occasional slacker who hasn't shoveled once. But the main commercial strips are BAD.

I walked from Hertel to almost Kenmore ave on Elmwood. Maybe 1 sidewalk shoveled in the WHOLE stretch. The snow was waste high. People in the streets. VERY dangerous and most nowhere to go or cross the street. The crosswalks have 6' of snow on them and just enough room for the cars. Basically means that when I needed to cross the street, I was in a lane of traffic.

Walks through the Hinman \ Target plaza.. not too bad.Then down Delaware back to Hertel and then up Hertel to Parkside. Delaware also had maybe 3 total sidewalks plowed. There was so much snow I had to walk in the street on DELAWARE to get back to Hertel.

These places didn't look like they attempted to shovel. There were at elast 20 - 30 other people doing the same thing. I want to walk on the sidewalks but it was near impossible. You would get to an intersection, climb 6' of snow, careen into a crosswalk with 6" of water, get beeped at because someone is trying to turn onto the street from Delaware and forgot to check to see if there was a pedestrian crossing before starting the turn, climb another 6' mountain to walk through 18" of slush and snow to the next intersection. A block or two of that and I said, screw it, and walked in the street.

Hertel was a little better at least there were more plowed sidewalks than not... but crossing intersections is again REALLY REALLY difficult. mountains of snow from the sidewalk plows are shoved to either side. Instead of distributed along the whole stretch.

And the 6" of snow that the plows left on the sidewalks has not been compacted into ice. Even if they 'plowed' it, there is now a nice layer of ice everywhere.

Take some time, a little elbow grease and do the job right people... this is embarrassing. I gave up after a while. No more shopping. Sorry you lost by business until the snow melts.

I'm assuming that everyone who complains about the lousy job the City does plowing the streets shovels their sidewalk.

I discovered several years ago that the City made a profit of $3.8 million ticketing illegal parking.

I checked the number of illegally parked cars on our street and discovered that there were approximately the same number of unshoveled sidewalks.

If the City would ticket property owners who did not shovel their sidewalk as well as they ticket illegally parked cars the City could make a few extra million dollars to spend on better plowing.

It really is simple. But simple solutions escape our City Hall.

I would much rather have the option of walking to so many things in my neighborhood than being forced to drive everywhere in the suburbs (snow or not). The bad plowing is a problem maybe a dozen days per year. The lack of sidewalks and places nearby to walk to are a 365 day per year problem in the 'burbs.

Thank you for the new website design. Much better in many respects.

I couldn't agree more with TheREALsbrof and Daniel Sack. The City needs to fundamentally alter its approach to enforcement of the requirement that sidewalks be shoveled.

Help do your part by calling in unshoveled sidewalks to the Complaint line at 311. Unfortunately you will need to know the address of the property you're complaining about, but if you pick one in the middle of a bad block perhaps the inspector will notice the properties on either side haven't been cleared either.

Why is this important? The City really does track complaint and resolutions and if they're getting a ton of complaints and are only responding to a small % of them then they will have internal pressure to revise the system.

My personal favorite idea - let the Parking Enforcement crews each pick a block a day in their districts and write snow removal tickets.

Why not wait until May to plow?

The streets around where I live (off Richmond) took a while to get plowed and are still less than stellar. But I think it's more the fault of the people than the city. Every block has cars parked illegally which inhibits the plows. Yesterday I was stuck behind a plow on Bird for 20 minutes because of an illegally parked car jutting into the street. Finally, after going door to door, the car was moved and traffic flow was restored. The case is the same all over. If people would move their cars properly I'm sure it would make the whole process a lot more efficient.

I locked my keys in my car monday while digging it out, I messed up at least 3 plows passing by (maybe the same guy thrice) Either way I felt terrible. But needless to say our street in north buffalo was plowed very well by saturday. Although I did live on minnesota a few years ago and we got minimal plowing.

STEEL: To clarify the tax issue: Homes listed for sale generally show the current taxes at the current assessment. Many of the homes in the EV are priced significantly higher than their current assessment.

When the home does sell, the city will eventually re-assess at full market value and charge the owner approximately $27 per $1000 of assessed value. That means a $350,000 sale will eventually pay about $9,500 in taxes. A great example is a home listed on Cleveland at $349,900 which shows about $5,000 in taxes. If it sells at the asking price, those taxes will almost double.

I personally get asked about this all the time by clients. They see the listed taxes and want to know "why are the taxes so low on this one"?

so the mayor is going to conduct an internal investigation regarding the inefficiencies in the recent snow clean up. this is where i have an issue. how effective is 'citistat' if the mayor does not know what is going on with snow removal efforts in the city. snow is not new to this region (just in case you didn't know). snow removal should be a strength when it comes to the city's business, and the mayor should be leading the way at city hall. this is a reflection of the poor leadership mayor brown has to offer. it is true that the citizens are half of the equation, the administration is the other, and it is absolutely shameful that an investigation is in the order. all it does is cover up the mayor's ineffectiveness. he should have had the ranks prepared and motivated to perform at their best to take on this storm. he should have known what the plan of attack was, and known what has worked in the past. we have had snow before...everybody knew it was coming. he should have been informed because of initiatives like 'citistat', not to mention communicating with the department heads responsible for the snow removal plan. the buck stops at the mayor's office. please mr. mayor, spare us this worthless investigation and take responsibility as the leader of this city's government.

elias - At least Brown now admits the snowplowing had serious problems, unlike a few people who left comments above saying because they personally didn't get stuck that meant other people were making mountains out of a molehills, etc..

There were reportedly over 5000 calls to the city's complaint hotline those few days - a huge number. After a few days of his spokesman saying the plowing was as good as can be, at least eventually the administration changed their tune. Hopefully they'll make real improvements and not just talk.

I don't know if Citistat can help. The few snippets of televised Citistat meetings I saw seemed like political theatre. By comparison, what's been reported about the county's Six Sigma effort seems more substantive although very limited.

I agree with you that after 3 years the Brown admin should be doing a better job at it (plows should already be tracked by GPS for example), but the idea of "investigating" doesn't bother me. To identify the cause of problems is investigation. To admit problems is talking responsibility, even if late. Investigation need not be some drawn out thing. The question will be the quality of conclusions they reach and what changes they make. New equipment won't happen until next year, but some other changes could and should be faster. Parked cars are part of the problem, but not the only part. I saw way too many cases of unplowed snow not blocked by cars - just ignored for whatever reason.

whatever, thats all well and good. the truth is the administration was asleep at the wheel. i understand that investigating will help identify the problem, these guys shouldn't be 'changing their tune', and giving them credit for that to me is simply validating the administration's lack of leadership. this is an issue that needs to be done right the first time. this isn't an october surprise storm, snow is not new to us, and everybody knew this storm was coming. there should be no mistake. the city has been in the snow removal business for i'm sure almost 2 centuries, why screw it up now. i would love to see the mayor be more of a stand up guy and a better leader, thats all. an investigation seems like he is weaseling his way out of being the guy in charge when things go wrong.

If you want to see what the world and Wall St journal think would help fix Buffalo:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122852270789884347.html