By Mark Fischenich
NORTH MANKATO — North Mankato’s first snow emergency in recent memory caught scores of residents unaware Sunday, resulting in 84 parking citations and 72 vehicles towed.
A similar number of residents successfully scrambled to move illegally parked vehicles Sunday when police officers used air horns and squad car light bars as warnings that citations were being issued, said Police Chief Chris Boyer.
City officials couldn’t recall the last snow emergency in the North Mankato, which until recently had an informal policy of avoiding them whenever possible. Instead of towing parked cars, plow crews would simply return in ensuing days to clear areas where they’d been forced to plow around parked vehicles.
Tough budget times forced the city to reconsider that policy in an effort to reduce staff and fuel costs.
Boyer, who joined the department in 2000, said there haven’t been any snow emergencies during his tenure. But he had plenty of experience with the task — driving from street to street, issuing tickets, dealing with frantic people who discovered their vehicle was being towed — during his previous job as a Mankato officer.
Despite the newness of the experience for North Mankato residents, Boyer didn’t see much difference in reaction compared to residents across the Minnesota River.
“I didn’t see a huge difference in the amount of complaints,” he said.
Some people vented to his officers about the ticketing ($15) and the towing (a charge of $54.50), and he had a couple of calls Monday morning.
“I think the police department kind of went out of their way to assist people,” City Administrator Wendell Sande said of the deliberate attempt to be a bit noisy about the operation to give residents a last chance to abide by the snow-emergency rules.
Residents who followed the rules parked on the even side of lower North Mankato streets Sunday because it was an even-numbered day on the calendar. And law-abiding residents on snow emergency routes (Belgrade, Range, Sherman and the portion of Center south of Belgrade) got their vehicles off of both sides. In upper North Mankato, parking is prohibited on residential streets.
Those who weren’t following the rules suffered the charges and the hassle of picking up their vehicle at the Affordable Towing impound lot.
The city didn’t begin enforcement until 8 a.m. Sunday, after notice appeared in The Free Press, on the city Web site and on local radio stations.
Sande said City Hall received only a half-dozen calls, not all of them complaints, related to the snow emergency. Councilman Billy Steiner, who lives in lower North Mankato, said he hadn’t received the expected outcry from those ticketed and towed.
“I am surprised that we didn’t get any calls or e-mails,” Steiner said.
The city’s actions did prompt a letter to The Free Press by M.L. Williams, a Grant Avenue resident who didn’t get towed but thought the entire exercise was absurd for such a small snowfall.
“I thought this was a shameful exhibition,” Williams said in an interview, suggesting that the only people who benefited were the tow-truck drivers. “... This must have been a stimulus package for the towing company.”
On his street, after the cars were towed from the odd side and that side was plowed Sunday, the plows hadn’t returned as of Monday afternoon to do the even side, Williams said.
“Maybe God only snows on the odd side,” he said.
Williams said he believes the snow emergency was retribution by city staff because resident opposition quickly killed their original plan to make plowing easier. Initially, the city implemented a calendar parking program whereby residents were allowed to park only on the side of the street that matched the date throughout the winter, snow or shine.
Despite Sande’s belief that the system was the lowest-cost way of clearing streets, the City Council voted to end odd-even parking Jan. 20 — two days after it had been implemented. The decision came with an instruction from the council to call snow emergencies more frequently.
A month passed with no plowable snow until Friday night’s weather when the National Weather Service measured just under 2 inches in Mankato and KEYC-TV measured 3 inches in North Mankato.
At A Glance
North Mankato residents who want to be notified when snow emergencies are declared can sign up for e-mails of all city notifications at www.northmankato.com. Just click on Newsletters and Notifications on the left-hand bottom side of the city’s home page.
People can also call the city’s snow emergency hotline at 625-9131 during snowy weather to see if the parking restrictions have been imposed.
