Snow Days
February’s “Presidents Day” passed with another “tough” snow fall in the Metro Area. Similar to a Sunday snow fall and freeze in December, it turned into a prolonged road clearing. Novi was able to get back to normal sometime on Tuesday. (2 days into the work week). Novi residents were asked to take solace that other communities took longer and needed assistance to make roads passable. But is this the competition we should be focusing on?
Consider this. Employers in the Metro area typically hire from many of the surrounding communities and expect those employees to have a safe passage to work daily. Novi companies, hire from Livonia, Farmington and Plymouth, and vice versa. When this area competes for new jobs versus other regions, our area snowfalls are NOT a competitive advantage. In fact, southern communities even as close as Cincinnati use lack of snow as a competitive advantage over the Detroit area. The relative low ranking of this region in mass transit increases the critical need for effective road snow removal.
Meanwhile, virtually every community in the region has cut back on their weekend snow removal commitments. DPS officials in Novi and other cities have taken on a roll as “Meteorologists” or weather men before deploying snow crews on weekends. They now not only need to coordinate the resources to clear roads, but they must accurately forecast the ever changing Michigan weather. How many of us would welcome this added responsibility to our jobs? Yet we somehow reason that Mother Nature can have a 5 day 40 hour week restriction since monetary resources are tight.
It is clear that government cuts are necessary in this economic environment. Is this really the cut we need to make as we work to rebuild our region? Should a weekend snow storm create a Monday and Tuesday “Snow Day”?
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