City Snow Removal 2014 …

Lock Haven Mayor Says Inflated Expectations

LOCK HAVEN — The new year has been rough on roads, rough on drivers, rough on those who shovel their sidewalks.

And 2014 has been extremely rough on the snow removal portion of area municipal budgets. Lock Haven Mayor Rick Vilello said the city budgeted $100,000 for snow removal in the fiscal year that began Jan. 1 and expenditures so far total somewhere between $110-thousand and $115-thousand and continue to go up.

The normally upbeat mayor is a little peeved at criticism aimed Lock Haven’s way on how the county seat handles its snow removal.

Vilello told The Record he “disputes the contention” that snow removal in the city lags behind other communities such as Williamsport and Bellefonte and said he made a recent trip to Bellefonte and said Lock Haven is in better shape in terms of cleaning its streets.

He said the community has “inflated expectations” as to Lock Haven’s capacity to stay abreast of the storms that have deposited snow after snow on the area, calling this winter the worst in the last five years.

Clean-up is costly, the mayor said, use of one grader and one loader with crew costing $1,500 a day. Hoping for better days, several times Vilello said that he and the city are “ready for spring.”

Meanwhile he expressed a concern about the city’s depleted salt pile; 700 tons have been used so far and less than 100 tons remain and little can be found on the open market because of demand all across the Northeast.

Vilello defended the city performance, noting city crews are responsible for maintaining 32 miles. He said a new process has been put in place, doing cleanup according to signs posted for the city’s street sweeper schedule.

Most recently a plowing crew goes out at midnight and a removal crew starts up at 7 a.m., working this week in the city’s hill section.

Lock Haven is not alone in dealing with the severe winter. A spokesman for South Renovo said a problem there is the public’s unwillingness to move their cars. The effort was hampered by the lack of a borough employee until early this week so council members had been volunteering to plow.

South Renovo is running its snow removal ordinance in this week’s Record but the spokesman said the new borough employee will likely have to post “no parking” signs and then knock on doors to get people to move their vehicles so the streets can be plowed.

The situation was described as similar in Renovo, again the problem because no one will move their cars.