A couple folks have written in to DM over the last couple days asking about whether the City of Decatur owned or had access to any snow plows or sanders.  I relayed the questions to City Manager Peggy Merriss, who was good enough to provide us with a thorough response.

Overall, this weather event has been reasonable. The last time something like this happened was about ten years ago and we lost a lot of trees, had significant property damage and had massive power outages that lasted for days. (Mine was out for five). So far, we have gotten through this one with very few accidents, no real damage and no disturbance to the power supply.

We do not purchase or store salt. We do have a sand spreader and our standard procedure is to sand areas that are identified as a critical need by our public safety and public works staff.

We do not have a snow plow. Purchasing a snow plow for the once every five-ten years we would use it would not be fiscally responsible.

Generally we rely on the powers of nature to help us out – some sunshine and a light wind are most helpful and that doesn’t cost us.

Because we are not collecting residential sanitation tomorrow, our public works crew will be working on clearing the sidewalks in the central business district so that when it does refreeze Wednesday night, the walks will be clear and usable.

I hope most of the remnants of this weather will be gone by Saturday.

The Decatur Minute just put up a post highlighting the work of city employees cleaning sidewalks around downtown Decatur.

In a world, where school is permanently closed and parents just want you out of the house for 5 minutes…Sometimes the only thing you can do is…go sledding!

Here are a bunch of the sledding videos I received yesterday.  The first, from Cricket, has some serious production value…

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And I ask for a third straight day, “Which Decatur businesses are open for business today?”

Will this be the last day of this post?  Who knows!  Roads were definitely improving yesterday evening, but I haven’t been out yet this morning so I can’t speak to it.

Patch reports that Our Way Cafe on East College Ave, which suffered from a serious fire a year ago, is planning for a February reopening.

The popular eatery, known for its southern-style cooking and walls filled with memorabilia has a new look, a new menu and will soon be serving beer and wine.

“We’re evolving with the times by responding to people’s changing tastes and preferences in food and the way it’s prepared,” said owner Eva Roswall.

An all-organic salad bar with homemade dressings signals the biggest change.

Thanks to Steve for the link!