Mayor snowed under but thaw in forecast

12 December 2003

You sit down for dinner in a restaurant. The waiter forgets to set your table. The food arrives but it's not what you ordered. After a long wait, the right meal comes and the waiter trips, spilling it all over your lap.

And when the bill arrives, he demands you pay him double the normal tip.

This week, Tom Menino's been the waiter and the city has been his customer. Boston blew it, big time, cleaning up from the weekend storm. Then, while residents were still stuck at home, stuck in traffic or climbing over 5-foot snowdrifts to cross a street, next year's property tax notices arrived in the Tuesday mail.

The price for this lousy service had just gone up by 50 percent.

The rise in property taxes had long been predicted and Menino had been pushing, to no avail, to persuade the state to shift the increase to business properties. Menino's notices (replete with instructions on how to lobby the Legislature) were a thinly disguised PR piece designed to deflect criticism away from him and on to House Speaker Thomas Finneran. But juxtaposed with inept snow removal, the ham-handed effort just seemed to infuriate residents all the more.

The core of Menino's tenure as mayor - and the source of his extraordinary popularity - has been his reputation as a hands-on doer, a non-ideological "urban mechanic," in Mike Barnicle's memorable words. Moreover, ever since Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic lost his job when he failed to clean up after a 1979 blizzard, Snow Belt mayors everywhere have known that snow removal is job No. 1.

So what happened? So far, there have only been excuses and denials. Last Friday, before snow fell, the National Weather Service predicted more than a foot of snow, warning, "This is going to be a long, drawn-out affair."

Despite that, Menino tried to claim that forecasts had changed and the storm caught the city by surprise. He then tossed the blame to his public works chief: "Joe Casazza made this decision." Casazza, a 38-year veteran of City Hall who has survived by always knowing who's boss, said he had misjudged. Later, the two pointed fingers at private contractors.

In all fairness, anyone can make a mistake. Casazza has also survived because he is nationally regarded as one of the best public works commissioners around. On many occasions, Casazza's judgments about storms have proved spot on, meaning the city hit the streets with just the right amount of equipment as the snow started to fall or, even better, saved millions of dollars by holding off when a promised blizzard turned out to be just TV hype.

But that doesn't excuse the denials or some of the foolishness that transpired.

Menino told reporters, against all evidence, that 95 percent of the city was cleaned up. Apparently, all of the city's residents lived in the other 5 percent. Last February's much worse 27-inch storm elicited almost no complaints from Boston's neighborhoods. This year, complaints came in from almost everywhere.

An agonizingly slow midweek drive around Boston - more than 75 hours after the last flake fell - found appalling conditions. Traffic was reduced to one lane each way on major thoroughfares in Brighton Center, the South End, Dudley Square and Jamaica Plain. Off major roads, two-way streets became DE FACTOone-way streets. Clogged roadways in the Financial District had a ripple effect, backing up traffic along Storrow Drive and the Central Artery. Compounding the problem, the city let go forward a union march that shut downtown streets during rush hour.

And then there were the things you can't figure out. Menino declared a snow emergency on Saturday, which means cars couldn't park on major arteries. The idea is that they either move or get towed so that plows can clear the full width of the street. So what did the city do? It ticketed cars - some two or three times - but left them sitting on the street. It was as if the purpose of the declared emergency was not to help with cleanup but rather just add to the city's coffers.

So what's the fallout? Is Menino done?

Hardly. It's still a safe bet that, come the next election in 2005, Menino will be without a serious challenger, handily winning a fourth term. The mayor's lucky on this one. If the weather had turned colder and the snow had frozen, residents for months would have had a daily reminder of the city's failure. Instead, balmy temperatures and a soaking rain have already washed away a good deal of the evidence.

But more than lucky, Menino is smart enough to make sure it won't happen again. Forecasting is an inexact science, but here's one you can count on. As soon as the next storm blows in, the plows will be on the streets before the first flake falls.

Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.