Friday, January 8, 2010
Barry / By the Way Today's Featured Whine: It Takes a Snowfall of Micrometers to Hold Us Back
Posted by Bruce Barry on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 11:02 AM
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Yes, we live in the South, and yes, it's routine to the point of tiresome for transplanted Yankees to whine about how little frozen precipitation it takes to close schools and send people to grocery stores for milk and bread. And yes, it's appropriate that we don't devote copious public resources to dealing with the very occasional circumstances that give rise to snowy and icy streets. But after venturing out this morning I'm going to say it anyway:
It is pathetic for a city in a four-season climate that wants to be taken seriously as a cosmopolitan metropolitan destination that so many streets and sidewalks are non-trivially hazardous a day after a snowfall of less than a quarter inch (was it even an eighth?). It's hard to imagine that a meeting planner visiting the city today to decide whether to book the convention center for a winter conference, or a corporate executive visiting to ponder a headquarters relocation, wouldn't come away wondering what kind of third-rate municipal public-works infrastructure is in play here.
There, I said it. Now move along.
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