The stories coming out about the plowing of city streets in East Boston has residents fuming and rightfully so. Howeverprobably no one is more upset than Mayor Thomas Menino.
Menino has always prided himself in taking care of the details involving residential services and life in Boston. Whether it be by walking the streets and noticing what needs to be done or just listening to residents talk about their neighborhood’s needs, Mennino is there and gets it done.
It is safe to say that the towing and plowing problems that happened in East Boston on Monday night and early Tuesday morning would be enough to send Menino’s blood pressure through the roof.
We know the facts of the weekend snowstorm.
This was a huge snow storm that strained not only the resources of Boston and many other cities and towns, but also state agencies like the MBTA and private companies like Mass Electric and NStar.
We know that many neighborhoods in Boston had more than adequate street plowing. We know that all the major roads were passable at all hours of the storm in all the neighborhoods including East Boston. We know that cars parked on the streets can hinder snow plowing efforts. And yes, many secondary streets were not plowed well .
However, in the end, there were no deaths reported in East Boston. We know that a proactive call went out from city services warning residents to be on alert for carbon monxide poisoning in their homes and vehicles. We know that the Mayor’s hotline was manned, taking responses and suggestions. And city services like police and fire were ready at all times during the snowstorm.
We know that publicly Menino will take the heat for the snafus of Monday and Tuesday night in East Boston because as Harry Truman pointed out the buck stops here.
However, privately, Menino will not brush this outlier aside but will dissect what happened and make sure that it will never happen again.
After Hurricane Sandy, we wrote an editorial urging our city officials to look at what happend in New York City and try to prevent that scenario from happening in Boston. Last week, Menino implemented initatives to deal with a Sandy-like storm hitting Boston.
While we can say with certainity that there will be plowing problems in future snowstorms, we can also say with certainity that what issues happened in East Boston will be fixed by Tom Menino.