Fulton council members are reconsidering the city's snow removal policy after city officials received many complaints for not deploying snowplows after the first snowfall of the season.
"I know we established (the policy) and we voted for it, but I don't think it's working out in the way I thought it would work out," 4th Ward Councilman Steve Moore told the council Tuesday.
Third Ward Councilman Richard Vaughn agreed, saying several people had called him and had stopped him on the street to discuss the issue.
Fulton City Administrator Bill Johnson said the changing conditions of the snowfall may have contributed to the uncertainty about sending out snow removal crews.
"In my opinion, I think the issue was that it started to melt and the snow got really slushy," Johnson said. "If it would've just stayed cold, it would've packed down hard. I don't think it would've been an issue."
On Friday, Johnson said the council adopted a snow-removal policy a few years ago that doesn't require the city to deploy snowplows unless there's more than 2 inches of snow on city streets.
"Each snowfall is evaluated on its own merits," Johnson said. "Every time we call the snowplow trucks out, it costs about $10,000. So by reducing the amount of times we need to get the snowplows out on the road, we're saving the city quite a bit of money."
He said the policy is not intended to overlook safety concerns and is meant to be more cost-effective.
Johnson said the snow policy has worked well in previous years, but the city needs to better evaluate potentially dangerous weather conditions.
"We should have called the trucks out at that point to scrape the slush off the roads, but then it got very cold that night and it froze hard," he said. "It was a bad decision on the city's part."
Johnson said city officials will now be more attentive to developing weather conditions and will make a decision by anticipating future conditions.
"(Fulton interim City Engineer Kyle Bruemmer) and I have already talked about it, and we're going to give consideration to what the temperatures are going to be, what the forecast is going to be, to hopefully alleviate this type of situation again," Johnson said.