Submitted by RustyJeans t3_ywsawr in WorcesterMA
Comments
New-Vegetable-1274 t1_iwm8quq wrote
Worcester once had a large DPW and a fleet of trucks. They did an excellent job of plowing and snow removal. Sometime in the 1970s the city decided to privatize all of that. Anyone with a pickup truck with a plow became a contractor. These guys had areas they were responsible for and were on call. Once the call was made they were on the clock even if it hadn't started snowing. There was a threshold at which point they had to go to work. Say it was six inches, nothing got touched until it reached that. So while the clock was running, these guys picked up private jobs while they waited for the snow to hit the threshold. The city determined when the threshold was met or not and the clock stopped or kept going. I don't have to tell you that Joe pickup truck was raking it in all winter on the taxpayers dime. Worst yet, this began a long history of shitty roads in Worcester. The plowing went from excellent to maybe a single pass if you were lucky. A lot of these guys went to a bar once they got the call and got fortified for what may be a long night and some of them ended up playing bumper cars. I don't know what Worcester does now. I don't think the tax base would allow a bigger DPW.
WorcesterMom t1_iwo73xb wrote
They brought back the busses and it’s going pretty well, let’s bring back the plows too!
New-Vegetable-1274 t1_iwrg9sv wrote
The Worcester I grew up in, 50s-60s was a prosperous industrial city. When I was in third grade our geography textbook (they taught geography back then) had a picture of Worcester. The caption said Worcester Massachusetts the industrial capital of the world. At the time there was more industry here per square mile than any other place on the planet. As a kid I thought that was a pretty big deal, it was. There were many thousands of jobs and so a very high tax base. There were many factories that employed 300+ employees, some much larger. I worked in one that would take twenty minutes to walk from one end to the other. with that kind of revenue the city employed hundreds of people and stuff got done. When industry left, Worcester all but died. From what I read here on reddit it's on the mend. I don't live there now but still would love to see Worcester prosper again.
tootnine t1_iwlpsm4 wrote
I love this episode. Homer pulls up and shovels it into his car and then starts selling salt "with prizes" out of his house
DMoney1133 t1_iwleoun wrote
Must be a new guy on the salt shaker.
KCC416 t1_iwnuvof wrote
When I lived in Holden after a storm ended and clean up was done all of Holden's roads perfect. Going to Worcester via Salisbury street days after the storm by Assumption that hill into Worcester.. was very scary.. always slippery and I almost hit a bunch of college kids "sledding" in the middle of the road at 10:30 PM at night on my way to work.
NovelNo87 t1_iwmexpn wrote
We’ve already used up our snow budget for the season 🤪
KCC416 t1_iwl2b0o wrote
Glad to see Worcester is so bad with snow and ice removal.. the Landis, North Carolina highway department does a better job.... Using the worcester wait until it melts system.
GoblinBags t1_iwlkb90 wrote
Once the snow is on the ground, the stuff that literally flabbergasts me is going over the town lines. Like Worcester to Leicester, Holden, Grafton borders go from an inch thick sheet of ice with an inch of slush on top to a perfectly clean road. It's almost jarring.
orzechod t1_iwlrs0f wrote
I'd be interested in seeing a comparison between Worcester and surrounding towns which lists miles of public road, snow-removal budget, and citizen satisfaction. my gut says things are worse here because the ratio of plowed miles to available dollars is higher, but that's just a guess.
emptygroove t1_iwl8ui9 wrote
Think of the cost savings! One trip out in November, job done.
I'm sure it's the same everywhere but I always think back to around 2004-5 when they said that they were going to put GPS in city plow trucks and any contracted plows. They went completely apeshit...though to be fair, there were less plow trucks in DD parking lots after that...