Snowpolitics: Candidates for D.C. office weigh in on the snowstorm response

Snow is a vexing problem for D.C. There isn’t enough of it — 13.7 inches annually on average, but swinging wildly between boom and bust years — to justify having lots of heavy equipment around to clear it. So when it does hit the ground, the city can easily seem overwhelmed or slow to address it. 

And there’s been plenty of vitriol thrown the way of Mayor Muriel Bowser since the city was blanketed with “snowcrete” 10 days ago, whether by residents angry that neighborhood streets and sidewalks remained uncleared for days or parents frustrated that kids were called back to school even as getting around remained challenging. 

It is, of course, easy to be a backseat plow driver when it’s not actually up to you to deploy a small army of people on punishing schedules to clear snow and ice, much less tell kids when to return to school. And such criticisms are even more expected in an election year, when people are vying for the jobs that oversee those snow-clearing operations.

So we wanted to know: For those who are running for office, what would they have done differently? We emailed questions to the more than 40 people running for mayor and D.C. Council, and a dozen responded (though only one of whom is running for mayor).  

The nature of the storm

Since the storm hit, D.C. officials have argued that the storm was distinctly challenging to deal with. 

Edward Daniels, an at-large council candidate and current ANC commissioner in Navy Yard, says any talk about how to improve D.C.’s snow response has to be realistic about the nature of this event.

“We have never had the combination of significant snowfall, topped with ice AND sub-freezing temperatures for 10 days after,” he writes. “It's very unfair to expect a magic wand response to this when we've never had this combo before and our city does NOT own the snow-clearing equipment that New York, British Columbia or any of the other cities that people are comparing us to.”

But Ward 1 candidate Aparna Raj argues that for as challenging as the storm was, weather forecasters warned it was coming. “There was time to prepare,” she argues.

And Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who is running for mayor, says the unique nature of the storm doesn’t excuse what she says were immediate failures of government agencies to work together immediately on cleanup efforts. “We need better interagency coordination,” she says. “The real breakdown happened the first day of the storm, when it became clear the snow was freezing. That was the time for all-hands-on-deck.”

(Kenyan McDuffie, another main contender for mayor, didn’t respond to our questions.)

Streets

The state of our streets has gotten some of the most attention from residents. 

Dyana Forester, an at-large candidate, wrote that “the District did a reasonable job clearing major arteries and main roads,” a sentiment that was echoed by others. “But many residential and secondary streets were inadequately plowed — or not plowed at all.”

Lynch says that D.C. should consider banning non-essential traffic during big snow storms to give plows more time and space to work. And Elissa Silverman, a former at-large councilmember who is running again, agrees that there should be mechanisms to get more cars off of streets. 

“Why doesn’t the District make an arrangement with parking garages in downtown, as well as dense areas like Capitol Hill, that you can move your car into a garage for $5 or, better yet, free? That gets cars off the streets and makes the streets easier to clean,” she writes.

Miguel Trindade Deramo, another Ward 1 candidate and current ANC commissioner, thinks that the post-storm cleanup of residential roads was disjointed, and residents had few means to communicate directly to the city about uncleared roads. “Crises reveal existing weaknesses,” he writes. “The fact that we can’t report missed snow removal on the 311 app is a shame — but the bigger shame is that the 311 app is too unreliable.” If elected, he said he would focus on adapting technology and staffing to be able to respond more quickly to emergencies. 

Sidewalks and alleys

When it comes to D.C.’s streets, there’s no question who’s responsible for clearing them: the city. If that doesn’t happen, it’s very easy to know who to point a finger at. But when it comes to sidewalks and alleys, well, that finger might be pointing right back at us.

Like most jurisdictions, D.C. law requires homeowners and businesses to clear the sidewalks adjacent to their properties, while the government is responsible for sidewalks in front of schools, libraries, rec centers, and bus stops. But if history is any guide (and it is), many D.C. residents aren’t picking up shovels.

“D.C.’s response to the recent storm requires a collective effort beyond just the government,” writes Benita Carmichael, a candidate for the Ward 5 seat on the D.C. Council. (The incumbent, Zachary Parker, did not respond to our questions.) “It involves the entire community.”

A resident can be fined $25 and a business $150 if they don’t clear their sidewalks within eight daylight hours of a storm ending. Bowser initially suspended the fines, arguing that the snowcrete was more challenging to chip away at. But the administration says that enforcement of the law has resumed this week.

Lewis George says the storm should prompt a broader rethink of how sidewalk-clearing is handled. “We need to rethink the city’s approach to sidewalks. Right now, it’s all on individuals and businesses,” she writes. 

Soon after the storm, she teased out what that could look like, writing on social media that D.C. could invest more in clearing sidewalks and provide residents and businesses “tools to do their part.” 

She and Carmichael both pointed to the possibility of expanding community participation through Serve D.C., the city’s mechanism to use volunteers to assist with emergency responses. (Ward 5 ANC Commissioner Joe Bishop-Henchman similarly proposed it in his own post outlining possible improvements D.C. could make to snow-removal.)  

Lewis George also says D.C. could learn from other cities, noting Baltimore’s famous salt boxes, which are distributed every winter to help residents treat sidewalks and streets. (Earlier this week D.C. distributed free salt, but from designated locations.) 

No matter how it’s done, Ward 3 council candidate Adam Prinzo thinks D.C. has to more broadly consider sidewalks “as essential infrastructure, not afterthoughts.”

And how about alleys? Their icy fate became a significant point of concern after this storm, since they provide access to city trash trucks. While it’s traditionally the residents’ responsibility to clear out their own alleys, the significant amount of snow caused D.C. to try something new this week: contractors and city crews have been using Bobcats to clear narrow paths so some trash collection can resume.

Lynch says that, moving forward, D.C. should take more formal responsibility for clearing alleys — and even start deploying Bobcats to clear sidewalks. Leniqua'dominique Jenkins, who is running for an at-large seat on the council, wants a different type of heavy machinery to help with sidewalks and alleys: “I would invest in smaller, neighborhood-scale snowmelters, to quickly clear sidewalks, bus stops, and neighborhood corridors,” she says.

Communications and oversight

Almost every candidate who responded to The 51st’s questions said the official communication about storm cleanup was severely lacking. Bowser’s aides say they made city officials available for more than a hundred interviews, but the mayor herself remained largely out of public view until three days after the storm hit. (Since then, she has held a number of press briefings.)

“There needed to have been more information sooner, giving a dose of reality and helping people plan for school closings, work, doctor’s visits, etc.,” writes Silverman. “I can’t recall in my lifetime a storm in which it sleeted all day.” 

“I’d push for clearer and more proactive communication during storms: regular updates on what’s been cleared, what hasn’t, who is responsible, and realistic timelines for improvement,” writes Prinzo. “Residents shouldn’t be left guessing or relying on social media to understand basic safety information.”

Raj also points to one area where administration officials have admitted improvement is needed: “The official D.C. government snow plow tracker proved to be unreliable, which only hampers public trust in government efficiency,” she writes.

Other than Lewis George, every candidate who responded to The 51st’s questions is running for council. That means that, even if they are elected, they won’t be directing plows or city workers. But Candace Tiana Nelson, who is running for an at-large council seat, says she would use her legislative perch to dig deeper into the funding and staffing of the D.C. Department of Public Works, the main agency that does snow removal.

“In the past several fiscal years, DPW has had swings in funding. You might think that has led to the right-sizing of the number of employees, but it has really shifted to more temporary contracts, not more full-time employees to do the work,” she writes.

Ward 1 candidate Jackie Reyes Yanes adds that she would use “oversight and budget hearings to push for faster deployment, clearer accountability, and stronger coordination — especially in residential areas.” 

Schools

When D.C. decided to reopen DCPS schools four days after the storm (on a two-hour delay), it was the first jurisdiction in the region to send kids back to the classroom. Counties in Maryland and Virginia waited until this week, and even then some are still delaying arrivals. (D.C. charter schools, which educate almost half of the city’s students, made school-by-school decisions on whether to reopen.) 

The decision has proven controversial, something Bowser herself predicted: “Whatever call we make about schools, somebody is mad,” she said on Jan. 28. DCPS tells The 51st that “more than half of students were present in school last week.”

In her response to The 51st, Lewis George avoided answering whether she would have opened the schools like Bowser did or kept them closed longer. She says that by “bungling” the overall snow response, the city put families in a difficult position: “Stay locked up at home and miss a day of classes, or risk the dangerous commute to get to school.” 

But, like Bowser, Lewis George says she recognizes that for many students schools are more than just education. Roughly 80% of DCPS’s 117 schools have free breakfast and lunch.

Most of the other candidates who responded said they wouldn’t have reopened DCPS as soon as Bowser did. They said that it wasn’t safe enough for students to get to school — much less teachers and staff, many of whom live in surrounding counties that were experiencing their own snow-removal challenges. (The Washington Teachers Union opposed the decision to reopen schools last week.)

Many residents in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River complained that their streets and sidewalks remained impassable even after kids were told to return to the classroom, and that the city was slower to get to them. 

“There was clearly inequity in plowing streets, with some wards, including mine in particular, not getting streets plowed until after kids were required to return to school,” writes Jacque Patterson, a current member of the D.C. State Board of Education and a Ward 8 resident.

Patterson notes that travel conditions are especially critical to consider since 72% of kids in D.C. attend a school outside of their neighborhood, with the distances increasing for families in wards 7 and 8 who more often seek charter or out-of-boundary schools. In Ward 7, kids travel an average of 2.2 miles to get to school; in Ward 3, where in-boundary attendance rates are higher, it’s only eight-tenths of a mile. 

Other candidates who preferred that DCPS remain closed say that the city should be more flexible in offering alternatives. Candace Nelson, running for the at-large council seat, says it would have been better for DCPS to “pivot to remote learning until safety concerns were addressed,” a point echoed by Dyana Forester and Ryan Prince. 

Elissa Silverman, for her part, says opening schools was the right call, but virtual options should have been made available “for those with disabilities who rely on yellow buses that might have a harder time traversing streets.”

Still, remote learning may not be a possibility; parents in Montgomery County requested it during their school system’s prolonged closure, but were told that it wouldn’t be offered because there was no guarantee that every student had access to a computer or tablet. But Lewis George says that other alternatives could have been explored to mitigate the loss of access to school buildings; she points out that Prince George’s County ran meal-distribution sites at designated schools while they were shuttered by the snow. 

Reyes Yanes, the Ward 1 council candidate and a former Bowser aide, says the city should have better communicated “clear, neighborhood-based benchmarks” that would result in schools reopening. (This week, Bowser said one of her main benchmarks was transit; she pointed to Metrobus having returned to near-normal capacity a few days after the storm as an important factor.)

All that being said, Daniels, the at-large candidate, tells us that he feels for any elected official who has to make the call on whether to reopen schools. “This is another damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation,” he writes.

As for Bowser, I asked her earlier this week what she would say to all the candidates for office criticizing her for how D.C. managed this storm. “Be careful with what they are saying right now,” she warned. Residents may remember the promises they make now when the next big storm hits, after all.