Dave DeLand

ddeland@stcloudtimes.com

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Everybody loves to. Particularly when it snows.

• Ask St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis. He hears the complaints.

"So, he's on the radio, somebody calls in and (says), 'Mayor, let me tell you how bad the streets were. They were so bad on Tuesday that they couldn't deliver the mail,' " said Steve Lawrence, St. Cloud's assistant public works director — the guy who oversees the city's snow removal efforts.

"And the mayor goes, 'It's a national holiday. They didn't deliver on Tuesday.'

"That's funny," Lawrence said. "To me, that's funny."

• Ask Lawrence. He hears the complaints.

"We have very high expectations, because our folks do a really good job," Kleis said. "When we have 13 inches of snow, people anticipate that being cleaned as though there was 1 inch of snow.

"I had a caller last Friday who said, "Why did you pull the plows?' I said no, the plows were out all day Monday. It just continued to snow."

• Ask St. Cloud's battalion of snow plow drivers. They hear the complaints, sometimes in unusual places.

"(One of the drivers) went into a bar and there was a guy in there vehemently complaining about the road conditions in St. Cloud," Lawrence related.

"The story goes something like this: 'Yeah, my company shut down because of the weather, and there was no work, so I had to come to the bar just to sit here and do something.'

"Well, he made it to the frickin' bar, but your company shut down for your safety? Right."

It's been a week now, and they're all still hearing complaints — about the snow, about ice-rutted roads, about what woulda coulda shoulda been done to handle the winter's first major storm better.

"No matter what type of snow occurrence you have, people talk about it," Kleis said with a chuckle. "My dad used to drive a snowplow (in Litchfield)."

"He said his dad used to get yelled at all the time," Lawrence said.

It goes with the territory when you have a snow emergency, like the one St. Cloud is still digging out from a week later.

Kleis and Lawrence are handling the grumbles with a sense of humor. Because if you can't laugh ...

"Everybody becomes an expert on how to plow," Kleis said. "I don't mind the complaints, because we live in a country where you can do that. Most places, you only get to complain once.

"I got a snow day from the office. But I get more calls at home. A snow day's not a snow day."

"The people that complain to me — there is a humorous side to it," said Lawrence, who took the job in March after 17 years in a similar position in Brooklyn Park. "There's a drop-dead serious side to it, too.

"It was a very small minority of the 65,000-plus people that live in this beautiful city (who complained), but they were vociferous. They were just through the jugular."

From a snow removal standpoint, last week's storm was about as bad as it gets.

"When the initial snow fell, it melted. Then it froze. Then it bound to the streets," Lawrence said. "Then you had 13 inches of snow, and traffic by cars just packed it down.

"The timing was terrible. It came during the daytime, with cars driving. We're out there trying to plow.

"Every 5 feet, there's a stuck car," Lawrence said. "How productive are our plows going to be? We had to tow 79 cars."

For emergency purposes, city plows focused on keeping arterial roads open. With snow coming down at a rate of 2 inches per hour, main roads required constant attention, meaning that side roads had to wait.

"My street wasn't plowed out until midday Tuesday," Kleis said. "The lower priority roads are done last: It just kept coming down.

"When I explained we hit the main arteries first, we had a call later in the day from a woman who heard me on the radio. 'I pay just as much taxes as people on main arteries. Why aren't my roads cleaned first?'"

Faced with this, city road crews did all that could have been expected, and more.

"You look back at the Armistice Day blizzard, which was 3 inches more than this, and people died," Kleis said.

"I had five guys that were (deer) hunting, looked at the weather and came back," Lawrence said. "They weren't called by their supervisor. They looked at the weather and said, 'St. Cloud needs me.'

"This was the perfect storm. I'd prefer not to do that again."

Hopefully, they won't have to — although if it doesn't warm up, conditions on the rutted roads won't change quickly.

"We're working on that," Lawrence said. "You blade off the snow, you put salt on it, it starts to loosen, you blade that off. It's a repetitive process.

"Long-term forecast, there's 32 to 37 degrees projected by the end of the week. That'll help even more."

"If we get that, we'll be able to plow down to the road surface," Kleis said. "If not, we're going to have that for five months."

There's nothing funny about that. But you still have to laugh — and remember where you are.

"I've got news for you: We've got snow on the ground still. It's Minnesota," Lawrence said.

"If you didn't think it was Minnesota, you shouldn't live here."

Contact Times columnist Dave DeLand at 255-8771 or by email at ddeland@stcloudtimes.com. Follow him on Twitter @davedeland and on Facebook at Dave DeLand SC Times.