Kenosha updates snow-and-ice manual, adds locations and emergency parking

The Kenosha Public Works Committee on Nov. 10 received and filed the city’s annual snow-and-ice control manual update after staff outlined modest but operationally important changes.

Public Works staff said the largest changes this year are additions rather than wholesale rewrites: seven stop/yield/curve/hill salting locations were added; roughly two miles of paved road that were not plowed last year were added to the plow list; and two Uptown parking lots between 24th/4th and 23rd north of 63rd Street (near the Nukila Building) are newly designated as emergency overnight parking. Staff also said Columbus Park, which had been used temporarily, is being removed from the temporary-lot list because the new lots have been added.

Aldermen asked whether removing Columbus Park or the other changes would reduce available spaces; staff replied they expect total capacity to be comparable or slightly increased and noted many of the jurisdictional swaps with neighboring municipalities remain unchanged. The presentation described multiple swaps: the city will plow 75th Street from Green Bay Road to 43rd Avenue (a stretch previously known as Highway 50), while Pleasant Prairie and the county will continue to clear adjacent sections the neighboring jurisdictions manage.

On operational lessons from a heavy early storm, Public Works staff said the event was unusually intense and that ‘‘there’s nothing in this manual … you can’t stay ahead of something like that’’ (paraphrase of staff comments). Staff recounted driving routes during the storm, praised crews for getting equipment out, and said the department’s relatively young workforce means some post-event cleanups and process refinements are expected.

The committee moved and carried a motion to receive and file the manual update. Staff said they will continue to review operations and suggested potential future budget/staffing adjustments when appropriate.