Okay. Good evening, everyone. This is a meeting for discussion between DPW and the public in the city of Providence because they're looking for answers. We have to call the roll. What's going on?
We have to call the roll.
So I had to call the roll. Can you call the roll, madam Clerk, please? Thank you. Chairman
Vargas? Present. Vice chairman Sanchez? Present. Councilman Espinal?
Present. Councilor Justin Royes is absent. Councilman Anavagas is absent. You have three present, two absent.
Thank you. So, madam clerk, can you
please read item one? Item one, discussion relative to snow removal and salting. The following have been invited. Patricia Koinfeng, director of public works Sal Solomon, superintendent, highway department Richard Perilla, deputy superintendent of highway Brandon Olson, associate director of environmental services.
Thank you very much. I wanna say welcome to my colleagues, council members. I want to take note the Councilwoman Ana Vargas is here.
And I want to say thank you to the solicitor to be here today in this busy day. You're not shoveling out? Alright. So today yes. Can you please show the mail?
Everybody raise your right hand. Please, swear under penalty and perjury that the testimony they're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Please state your full name and your title for the record, please.
My name is Patricia Coyne Fague. I'm the director of the Department of Public Works in Providence.
My name is Sal Solomon. I'm the highway superintendent for the Department of Public Works in Providence.
Richard Perella, deputy superintendent, highway division.
David Manborough, superintendent of sewer construction.
Melanie Jewett, curbside administrator, Department of Public Works.
Brandon Olson, associate director of environmental services.
Thank you. Okay. Thank you for being here today. We call this meeting because enough is enough, and we like to know what's going on. What happens in the beginning of the snowstorm, what happens in the middle of the snowstorm, and what's going on now.
So it's going to be a discussion between DPW and all the questions that we have to you, though. Hopefully, we can have great answers, a conclusion and a solution. That's why we're here. We're now going to take no votes, nothing about to make a decision. The decision will be you after this meeting.
I'm going to start for the first question is to the director. Do you coordinate with the police department when they have the parking ban?
I'm sorry. I I missed the beginning of your question.
Do you coordinate with police department
When the mayor has decided to institute a parking ban, we do have the police with us in snow operations. I thought it might be helpful as we start our discussion tonight, if I was to give kind of an overview of how we prepare and the staffing and what it looks like in terms of our snow operations, so that we're all dealing with the same set of information as we pursue this discussion and and then answer your questions, if that would be okay?
We had those questions in my in my book about the coordination. But I can give you time. You can do that.
Sure. I would appreciate that.
Thank you. So this storm that we're talking about tonight is actually the fifth storm event or snow event that we've had since the beginning of December, 2025. But, obviously, it's been the biggest and and the the most difficult to be fair. And so I'd like to just give a little overview of how we do what we do, and then to, at some point, offer suggestions on going forward and how we can do better. I do have at the table with me the people that you invited, councilman, but I also added mister Mambro, and miss Jewett because they have been part of our snow ops operation.
At this table, right now, you have in front of you over seventy five years of experience in dealing with snowstorms. Before a snow event is or when a snow event is predicted, and we've all become amateur meteorologists working at DPW, we keep an eye on the weather every single day, especially when winter is approaching. We start to plan and before even the summer is over, we've already started planning by ordering salt and supplies, making sure our vehicles are up to snuff, making sure our rental vehicles are secured and that we're gonna have that equipment that we need, and also putting out the invitation to bid, although it's not strictly a bidding process, but an invitation to, join DPW as a snow vendor. And that goes out in late summer, early fall, and continues indefinitely. In fact, that process is still open now if someone wanted to approach us now and say they would like to provide snow vendor services for the city.
When an event is predicted, we sit with a multidisciplinary team. We we talk to our counterparts in relevant departments such as property and parks, so that we can make sure that we're all have a full understanding of what the plan is. The man to my right, Sal Solomon is is the head of the snowstorm operation. I mean, I'm the I am the director, but he's the expert. And so, I rely on him to help guide what our plan is going to be.
Every snowstorm is different. And so, the things that we have to decide from the very beginning have to do with things like staffing and timing. And so, we would present a plan to the mayor saying, based on the forecast, here's when we think we should bring people in, here's how many people we think we should bring in, and here's, what we think those people should do. So in a storm that is mainly gonna be cold and ice, not so much accumulating snow, for example, we're gonna bring people in to spread salt on the street to pretreat. This storm, although there was a pretreating aspect to it, was more of a plowing storm.
So the salt did go down starting at about five in the morning on that Sunday, and that salt doesn't really make the fall the snow that falls afterwards all melt away. It does provide a surface for the plow to grip when later the plow is gonna plow that snow. We brought in, by 10AM that day, all DPW hands. So that's all, DPW staff who are engaged in plowing. And we had, over 60 city vehicles and rental vehicles at our disposal for that operation.
We also then, later we stagger it, we bring in inspectors and vendors. So the inspectors, we currently have 30 inspectors that were brought in. That's two per ward. We have gone back to plowing on a ward map rather than a sector map that we had been using. Because I listened to the people that are the experts in this and they implored me to consider going back to using ward maps because they were deemed more effective for the people that actually are driving the plows.
And so we have been dealing with wards. Every ward is split into two two pieces and each piece gets an inspector. 30 inspectors and those are managed by one individual. He's from our engineering department. That is a new development that I put into place to try to streamline and improve inspector services.
We provided training to inspectors and we also do an annual training for anyone that works snow, including everyone at DPW. That is an opportunity for especially the younger plow drivers or the newer employees at DPW to benefit from the expertise of people like these gentlemen, and many others in terms of what's it gonna be like if I'm in that plow truck for thirty six hours in a row. What what do I need to know? And beyond the training that they've already received, it's a good opportunity for for for us to impart that wisdom, to the younger group. And the inspectors are now part of that training.
Another person now manages strictly the vendors. So the vendors check-in. We have greatly improved the vendor, vetting process. We now make sure that their licenses are run, that their registrations are current, that the weights that they're giving us for the vehicles they're bringing us are accurate. And so we've worked very well with Providence PD and and I would I'd like to thank them for that.
They've they've been a great partner with us as we vet our vendors to make sure that the people we're hiring are the best people that we can have plowing our streets. Over the years, and I and and granted this is my fourth year with the department, I don't have a long history, but the people that do have have shared with me that the vendors that are working with us now tend to bring smaller trucks than in the past. I looked back at the, the the the trucks that were brought to us by vendors in the January twenty twenty two storm, which was the last really big storm that we've had, and was impressed by looking at the kinds of trucks they brought. Lots of six wheelers, lots of 10 wheelers. What we get now is very largely pickup trucks.
And to to clear a city this size using a lot of pickup trucks is a real challenge. We, last year, increased our rates for our vendor drivers to try to attract more. And we are one of the highest paid we pay more to our vendors than almost every other community in Rhode Island. Many of our vendors have told us that they they find it difficult to work in a city. There's there's manhole covers, there's tight corners, there's side streets, there's dead ends.
It's a lot easier to plow for DOT because it's a long straight highway. And so we're challenged by that and we know that we need to work within our procurement system to improve our vendor recruitment to see what we can do to get those bigger trucks. And our fleet also is is in need and has not really been paid attention to for a long time. This administration did recognize that, and we do have six new snow plows, large snow plows. They're on order, and they're not coming until probably October, but it's not because we waited.
It's it's taken that long. It's taken over a year for us to get those trucks. When we get those trucks, they are not going to augment our fleet. They're gonna fill holes. So with all that in mind, we gauge the timing.
We report to SNO ops, which right now is in our new building at 75 Chapman. I am there as well as the individual who runs the vendors, manages the vendors. We have an admin with us, and we have the gentleman that, oversees the inspectors. Okay? All of the inspectors are supervised by two, people, and that's Richard Perella and David Mambro.
Because of some union issues, The the supervisors of all the inspectors needs to be non union. It's challenging because non union don't get overtime. And, these men work in excess of thirty six hours, forty hours in a row because of the way the ordinance is, they can get overtime, but for me to get another nonunion person is a challenge. And so we're working through that challenge as well. During the snowstorm, we prioritize hills, main streets, overpasses, hospital routes, and whatever tomorrow's trash route is going to be.
This storm started on Sunday morning. Snow started falling pretty steadily. Got to the point where it was falling two inches, an hour, and there were points where there were whiteout conditions where we have to stop everyone for their own safety. And so there might be a pause, and that's normal during during that kind of a a snowfall. In addition to plowing, we have a crew that that responds to missing manhole covers.
When I first got hired, I I I went out with a plow driver in one of the large trucks. We plowed Broadway. I was in the passenger seat. I was only in that plow for an hour and I was exhausted at the end of that hour. It's a very very physical job.
And when we ran over a manhole cover, I I frankly thought my teeth might shatter. It's it's a very very physical job. So we do have a crew that responds to those missing manhole covers, which is a hazard of plowing in the city. We also monitor, We have the police officer with us to monitor calls for tows when there's a parking ban. And he stays with us, until they've reached capacity.
And so he was with us on Sunday until about midnight, and then he he was he was done. What I can say is, in addition to plowing and dealing with manhole covers, especially in this storm, just just by way of examples, at one point, there were three tow companies doing towing in the city. All three tow trucks were stuck in the snow, as was the police car that was with them. DPW had to dig them out. We got a call from an elderly couple.
The husband needed to go to the hospital because he had a blood pressure issue. They didn't wanna call the rescue because they couldn't afford it. So we went and made sure that they were dug out so they get to the hospital. There were essential workers. There was a surgeon who had a surgery to perform.
We helped him get out. And so all of those things also occurred. What makes this particular storm different than January 2022 in terms of the aftermath is the temperature. There's a there's something on I on one of the news channels tonight. This was the third coldest last week of January in Rhode Island history.
