The City of Jacksonville’s Chief Executive is praising the efforts of both city crews and citizens in the wake of the winter storm event.
Mayor Andy Ezard took to Twitter on Wednesday to say that street department crews and first responders were doing the best they can to keep up and asked the public to stay home if at all possible as a winter storm dropped more than 8 inches of snow on the city.
The Jacksonville Municipal Building was closed Wednesday and opened late today due to the continued difficult road conditions in town. This afternoon Ezard said again that the street department is doing a great job trying to keep up with the snow and continues to ask residents to be patient.
“Our guys are tired but they’ve done a great job down at the Street Department and you have to thank the community for their patience, and for the most part folks have been pretty good at staying home. And actually, I think it might be worse today than it was yesterday because of blowing.
We have five trucks and a grader plowing the streets and then a backhoe cleaning up the intersections. We break that up into twelve-hour shifts with six or seven guys on, and then another seven on. So they are long days for the guys but they have certainly stepped up and done a good job.”
Ezard says he doesn’t want to speak too soon and jinx the Street Department, but he says so far the work to keep city streets open has gone as well as it can without any major issues.
“Knock on wood because we are going to have to continue. It’s a tough day today, and tomorrow they are going to keep going back over the roads and do the best they can and I know a lot of the roads are packed down so folks just need to take their time.
You know, there’s approximately 170 miles of road that is just one trip through for our staff, and then they have to go back multiple times and take care of that, it’s tough. For the most part, the cars have been off of the snow routes, the emergency routes, but there are the side streets and other streets that aren’t the emergency streets where there are cars on the side, and the guys are just doing the best they can to work around them.”
Ezard says the city has not received many calls from residents about the snow removal efforts and thanks them for their patience. He says hopefully next week will bring better temperatures, but for now, he is just glad the storm did not drop as much snow as had been predicted at the start of the storm.