Ice removal continues across Lexington as some roads and streets remain covered, causing headaches for residents around a week and a half after January’s winter storm.
“We're all frustrated. The community is frustrated,” said Councilmember Chuck Ellinger during a Tuesday city meeting. “We're literally holding the schools at this point almost hostage because the kids can't get to school…people can't get to work and it's just real frustrating.”
Road crews are currently focusing on clearing school bus routes, the area around Rupp Arena and employment centers as ice still covers roads and parking lots across the city.
Commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works Nancy Albright said the department has hired two additional contractors this week and will continue to hire more if necessary.
“This is going to be estimated to cost the city an extra $95,000 just for this additional effort this week. So it'll be effective, it just won't be cheap. This is all construction equipment, so this is skid steers, graders, loaders, dump trucks,” Albright said.
The city plans to analyze its response and will reach out to neighboring cities like Louisville, Cincinnati and Knoxville to see what Lexington can improve on for future storms.
That also comes as some city leaders indicated they would like to revisit the weather response plan to see how the city can better deal with more frequent weather events amid climate change.
“What used to be typical, maybe 10 years ago, it maybe is no longer typical, and so we have to adjust our response to adjust to what may be considered a new normal,” Albright said.
The city already included an extra $2 million in its annual budget in response to the last winter season. Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton suggested during the Tuesday meeting that the city come up with a plan for how to deal with ice storms in particular.
“They immobilize us, and we are not going to look for northern cities so much because they mostly get snow,” she said. “We're going to look at storms that get weather like we do, and there are a lot of them around.”
Lexington still has around 5,000 tons of salt stockpiled in preparation for more winter weather, like Tuesday’s snowfall.
Lexington’s Department of Environmental Quality and Public Works is a financial supporter of WEKU.
