Man walking up Oakdale to Market St.
On Saturday, when the storm was in full force, everyone was calm and understanding. We were told it was gong to be a big storm with huge amounts of snow being dumped right at our doorsteps. We the people did not panic. Our city government and street crews had just as much warning as we did. Most of us had bought extra groceries, bags of street salt, and had our snow shovels at the ready. We assumed our streets would be properly taken care of. We've dealt with storms like this before. We had full confidence in our city government. No one was worried about their ability to get to work come Monday morning.
We were let down, but most of us believed it when we were told that street crews were doing all they could. In a way, they were. They were doing all they could to clear the streets that were in the plan for clearing streets. Unfortunately not very many streets seemed to be part of that plan.
The streets where the majority of Akron residents live on were not plowed, some for two days. Half the streets in Akron were not plowed after three days. To add to the frustration of not being able to go to work or to school, of having to dig out ambulances, or having to shovel paths down city streets, or having to wait thirty minutes to an hour for a city bus, some residents had to watch snow trucks drive down their streets with plows raised up and salt spreaders turned off. Sometimes one part of a street would be plowed, but the remainder was left untouched. We felt duped.
What good was it to maintain West Market Street if East Market Street was an iffy mess? What purpose does it serve to plow major roads if no one can reach them? Who made the strategic decision to keep all residential streets under a cover of snow and ice? Why were we told that everything was okay when it clearly wasn't okay?
We went from feeling disappointed to feeling angry when it became apparent to us that we were either being lied to or that the truth was being held from us. We were told to stop whining, to buy better vehicles, to grow up, to get a grip with reality because this is North East Ohio and snow happens, but we were not once told when we would see our streets cleared of snow and ice.
Our city government has grown so thin skinned it has erased all transparency with this problem, opting for strategic tweets and Facebook posts. The 311 information line we were all funneled through was off line for most of us. The online version crashed. We had no other way of reaching out for help. We resorted to communicating our needs and frustrations, and sometimes our anger through the very same accounts the city used to assuage us and tell us that they were doing everything they could to dig us out.
We were still trapped in our cars, waiting for the tow truck operators to dig themselves out of the snow. By the time a video of a temporary street employee throwing salt down cup by cup went viral, all pretense was gone. The majority of Akron residents knew their street was not going to be cleared, not under the plan the city was following. We laughed, made sarcastic comments, rolled our eyes and stopped believing anything we were told.
After three days of being immobilized, of having friends who lived on clearer streets chastising those living on lesser streets for criticizing and calling out their government, for being bad Akronites, after we perceived clear lines were being drawn around the Haves, while the Have-Nots watched them doing figurative wheelies on their clear streets, after spending hours and hours waiting for even one plow to show itself, we receives a soft reprimand from the city for laughing at the salt thrower, for pointing out how we used that video to express our view of the whole process.
Some of us got really angry and lashed out, but most of us were over it. We had shoveled our way out of our neighborhoods, and out of every neighborhood we got stuck in on our way to work. We had to. Most of us can't afford to take a snow day off. Many of us would get fired for not showing up at work.
If the Mayor's Office chooses to communicate with us through social media we have every right to respond to them through those channels. Using public forums allows for public viewing. We could not see the number of phone calls and emails that were sent to the city, but we could see and read the number of complaints on twitter and Facebook. We figured out the street snow removal plan was not working. and we said so. The Mayor works for us. City council members work for us. We are the customers. We needed straight answers and we got standard responses that contradicted what we were experiencing.
We did receive an apology, and an an explanation. Great, but it came at a time when it made no difference. The damage to our vehicles and our trust in the city was done. Many of us were too tired to even read it. It was long, and the print was small, and we had street drains to clear. In short, it was too little too late.
To have the term "Mob Mentality" thrown at us by those who would defend the city's actions for voicing our grievances in public is tactical. It puts us in the wrong and makes our city government look like the victim. Apology notwithstanding. We've had enough.
As citizens of the city of Akron we have a right to complain about city services that were not rendered. We have a right to be angry. We have a right to raise our voice, a right to be heard. We also have the right to speak up for the good job the street crews did following the city plan. We have the right to defend our city government. We have every right to speak our mind because as of today we don't live in a dictatorship or a totalitarian country.
Plow driver helping APS school bus stuck on Palisades Bridge, Thursday, 01/24/2019.
APS school bus stuck on bridge, Thursday, 01/24/2019.
