蜜芽传媒

ST. LOUIS 鈥� The city official overseeing snow clearance since last week鈥檚 storm said Thursday she鈥檚 been getting bad information about some conditions on the ground.聽

In a statement relayed to aldermen by the mayor鈥檚 office, Streets Department Director Betherny Williams said she drove through neighborhoods Wednesday where residents had complained, and found roads in worse shape than she had been told.聽

鈥淚t was clear that I had been given incorrect information from within the department about the status of our secondary and hill routes,鈥� she said.

Secondary routes are streets that are smaller than the major roads, but still carry significant traffic and generally feed into the major roads. Hill routes are streets with a grade of 8 degrees or more that are dangerous to navigate in the snow.

Residents and aldermen have been complaining for days that streets of both varieties haven't been fully cleared.聽

Conner Kerrigan, a spokesperson for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, said many of those routes were addressed Thursday.

He said the city is also hard at work salting residential side streets. The city normally leaves those to melt on their own, but in recent days, it has begun trying to clear them after a week of sub-freezing temperatures turned last week鈥檚 snow into treacherous sheets of ice.

The statements followed a hearing Wednesday where aldermen and dozens of residents vented their frustration with the city's response to the storm, which dumped heaps of snow across the region on Jan. 5 and 6.聽

Several residents at the hearing were from hilly Dogtown neighborhoods. The city is supposed to address those streets after taking care of the main thoroughfares and the secondary routes, but聽residents said they were largely untouched.

Others relayed stories of elderly residents effectively trapped in their homes, children struggling to get to school, and people struggling to get groceries, medicine and mail.

Williams said in her statement that it was after the hearing Wednesday that she drove through some of the neighborhoods discussed, and discovered she鈥檇 been misled.

She said the staff who relayed incorrect information will be held accountable in accordance with the city鈥檚 civil service rules.聽

Aldermen, for their part, had mixed reactions to the statement.

鈥淚鈥檓 not sure what to make of it at this point,鈥� said Alderman Bret Narayan, of Dogtown.

But he was happy to see trucks salting his ward鈥檚 streets.

But Alderwoman Cara Spencer, who is running for mayor, said it shouldn't have taken until Wednesday for Williams to recognize problems on the secondary streets. Aldermen have been complaining about them for days now,聽she said.

鈥淚t's unfortunate that she doesn't listen to the alderpersons,鈥� Spencer said, 鈥渙r live in the real world.鈥�

And Alderwoman Anne Schweitzer, of Boulevard Heights, brushed past the statement and the comments about staff.聽

鈥淭here鈥檚 a leadership issue in the Streets Department,鈥� she said.