St. Paul to Discontinue Snow Emergency Alert Telephone Calls This Year
Since the winter of 2005-2006, the City of St. Paul's Public Works department has been using an automated system to telephone city residents when a Snow Emergency was declared. Code Red, a voice messaging notification system, had the capacity to telephone every household in the city, plus cell phones and other numbers registered with the system, in less than two hours.
Code Red costs the city of St. Paul around $50,000 a year. And despite being such an efficient system, no link could be found between calls made and a reduction the number of cars towed. Even though the cost to the owner of having a car towed during a snow emergency is around $250, the city says that it looses money every time a car has to be towed, and the plug on Code Red is going to be pulled.
Most St. Paul residents who park their cars on city streets are aware of the Snow Emergency rules, and heavy snowfalls are hard to miss, so many of the cars that are towed belong to people who can't move them for some reason, regardless of whether they received a Code Red call. Still, I liked to receive the calls last winter, an extra reminder to trudge out in the freezing cold to move my car almost a quarter-mile to the nearest day plow route street. Living in downtown St. Paul has drawbacks.
St. Paul drivers can still get Snow Emergency alerts by email, and can check if there is a snow emergency at the City of St. Paul's website, and from news media outlets, local television, radio and internet news sites.
The greatest number of cars are towed on the first Snow Emergency of the winter. Don't be one of them: sign up for email alerts, and remind yourself of the Snow Emergency parking rules for your city.
Comments
loses, not looses
If the city loses money for every car towed and charges $250 to get your car out of impound than I think they have a problem with the tow trucks that they contract with. It must be like the $200 toilet seats that the white house buys. I live in saint paul and rarely watch the news, therefor I relied on those calls. It would have been nice to know that they are being discontinued before the were. As far as knowing when the city is going to plow our streets. They rarely do so. We can get 3 inches and they don’t plow them, so we are left uncertain on weather they will plow or not.
I too relied on those alert phone calls re: snow emergency alerts. However, $50,000 is a costly price for the service, so I think we can live without it.
But, an email alert would be an acceptable substitute. I clicked the link in the story above, but could find no info on how one can sign up for such emails.