City streets and side roads throughout the county are treacherous after the rain and snow mix that fell on Christmas day. Right: Earl Anderson of Maple Hill gingerly makes his way to the Grand Marais Senior Center.
Thecity streets are slick. Optimists might say the glare off the ice when the sun shines brightens our winter days. Others might be wondering where our public works departments are and why people are left to slide and fall across town.
When asked about the City of Grand Marais’ policy on keeping streets and sidewalks clear, City Administrator Mike Roth quoted from a January 5 Minneapolis Star Tribune
article by Bill McAuliffe: “Don’t like this Minnesota weather? Too bad,” says the headline. Thearticle goes on to say, “And there’s nothing we can do about it, because we’re all at the mercy of streets blanketed in ice that is too thick for plows and too stubborn for salt.”
Roth agreed the situation for pedestrians trying to navigate through Grand Marais is treacherous. “It couldn’t be any worse than it is,” he said.
If Highway 61 is clear of ice and snow and dry, why aren’t the city streets? According to Roth, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) plowed the highway over and over and put down salt and sand while the snow was still coming down over Christmas. That takes a lot of resources Roth said— money, equipment, and personnel the city doesn’t have.
Staff photos/Rhonda Silence
During the winter, the City of Grand Marais maintains the city streets south of Highway 61 and Cook County maintains them north of the highway. Both share maintenance of the new sidewalk along County Road 7, with the city taking the portion from the school to the old Gunflint Trail. The city removes most of the snow it plows.
The city has sanded multiple times, Roth said. During the Christmas snowstorm, the county focused more on the avenues that go up and down the hill, Roth said. Thesun in the southern sky has helped clear even more of the ice from the avenues. The county has started scraping some of the ice from the roads as well.
Businesses and homeowners are expected to keep their sidewalks clear. Some portions of residential streets have no sidewalks, however, and narrowing of some of the avenues has left even less room for pedestrians and vehicles to share. Roth said that when the streets were narrowed, the city understood things would be difficult in the wintertime. “As much as we want it to be pedestrian friendly,” he said, “we have to deal with the weather the way it is. …We need to get a little warmer before it starts to clear up.”
The city pays attention to requests regarding particular trouble spots. “If people call with some legitimate complaints,” Roth said, “we’ll take care of that.”
The city continues to work on improving its main corridors. “I don’t think we’re going to get to the point of having all the streets have sidewalks,” Roth said. “I don’t think we’d want to pay for that.”
The snow over Christmas was really tough to deal with, said County Highway Department Maintenance Supervisor Russell Klegstad, because it was really wet. “The county does not have a bare pavement policy,” he said, “but what we do, of course, is try to keep [the roads] the best we can.” He said the county has sanded and salted the entire Gunflint Trail four times already, although it might not look like it.
Early the week of January 4, workers installed grader blades with teeth that make grooves in the ice. The grooves will help keep the salt from blowing away, which it does on flat surfaces in heavily trafficked areas, especially when the weather is cold, Klegstad said. The equipment will be used on downtown streets, but operators have to be careful not to hurt the pavement.
“We’ve used a lot of our allocation of salt already with this storm,” Klegstad said. “If we get a couple of warm days, then it will take effect.”
A group working on Safer Routes to
Schools,
a national initiative to improve youth health and safety by improving walking and biking routes, has invited the public to a meeting in the Jane Mianowski conference room at Cook County High School at 3:30 p.m. Monday, January 11. The group will walk the nearby neighborhood to get an idea of pedestrian conditions and will meet for discussion and a meal afterward. Those interested in attending can RSVP to School Nurse Kristin DeArruda Wharton at Sawtooth Mountain Clinic (387-2330) or the school (387-2273).
The icy conditions are the subject of many coffee shop and grocery store conversations. County Attorney Tim Scannell confirmed rumors that he had been injured falling on the ice, but he wasn’t blaming anyone but himself: “My falls were playing hockey without elbow pads, which hurt the left elbow, and then broomball, which hurt the shoulder,” he wrote in a January 4 email. “Definitely not the city’s fault!”
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