Committee orders review of snow response after historic storm; council presses for tech, staffing and communications fixes

The Climate, Environment and Infrastructure Committee voted to send a report to the city manager to evaluate Cincinnati’s snow removal plans after a record-setting multi-day winter storm that left some neighborhoods unplowed for days.

The committee’s action followed a presentation from the Department of Public Services (DPS) and the Office of Performance, Data and Analytics (OPDA) that described operational challenges during the event, including continuous snowfall, low temperatures that reduced salt effectiveness, vehicle wear from multi-day operations and limitations in the public snow-plow tracker and 311/service-request workflows.

DPS officials told the committee the city’s traffic and road operations division is responsible for coordinating winter safety across roughly 3,100 lane miles. Jared Bowden, traffic and road operations superintendent, and Jerry Bolden, DPS representative, described the department’s preseason preparations — route books, materials, vehicle maintenance and a 25-person “winter night force” that staffs third shifts from roughly mid-November into spring — and explained field techniques such as anti-icing (pretreat) and de-icing, plowing and targeted snow hauling where space allows.

Eric Jamieson, director of OPDA, said the snow-plow tracker provided a high-level public view but was not designed to support DPS operations. He described a near-term pilot that combines GPS vehicle pings, service-request volumes and mapped views so supervisors can “see ourselves” and prioritize residential streets with high complaint volumes. Jamieson said DPS historically tracked progress on paper and that OPDA has begun piloting map-based views using GPS to identify residential streets lacking recent vehicle pings.

Committee members raised repeated concerns about discrepancies between 311 responses and residents’ street conditions, listing dead-end and narrow-hill neighborhoods (Mount Adams, Mount Washington, Westwood and Mount Lookout) as examples where residents reported streets were not cleared despite 311 replies saying otherwise. Council members pressed for clearer metrics (for example, guaranteed clearing time for 1–2 inch storms) and for accelerated installation of vehicle routing and in-cab technology funded in earlier budgets.

City leaders also described immediate and longer-term opportunities: an enterprise-wide site initiative to review staffing scalability and retrofitting of non-DPS vehicles, better command-and-control technology, integration of crowd-sourced service requests into an actionable map, and streamlined internal and public communications to set expectations about priorities and timing.

Committee members unanimously moved three related items for passage without objection: a formal evaluation of the snow removal plan, a request for options to pilot sidewalk-repair funding, and a report on preventative street maintenance to reduce potholes. The committee directed the administration to include cost estimates and implementation timelines as part of the site-review deliverables.

Officials emphasized there were no personnel critiques of frontline workers. The city manager and DPS repeatedly thanked drivers, mechanics and other staff who worked extended 12-hour shifts during the event. At the same time, several council members said the storm exposed longstanding gaps and asked for a concrete plan and measurable performance goals that the council can fund and track in the upcoming budget cycle.

Looking ahead, OPDA and DPS said they would continue the after-action review process, aim to deploy initial technology visibility tools within weeks, and return to the committee with a site-initiative timeline that includes staffing, fleet retrofits, command-and-control improvements and communications protocols.

The committee chair closed the item by scheduling continued oversight through the site-initiative process and by noting the committee’s expectation to receive cost and implementation details in subsequent reports.