UPDATED: Rosemount City Council Approves Changes to Snow Plowing Cul-De-Sacs

It may seem a little early to talk about snow plowing and winter storms, but it is Minnesota afterall.  

Therefore, the Rosemount City Council took a proactive approach Tuesday night by approving changes to the city's snow plowing cul-de-sacs policy.

City Engineer Andrew Brotzler was on hand to update the council on the changes to the cul-de-sac policy, which is closely modeled after cities like Apple Valley, Burnsville, Eagan and Lakeville. The council voted 4-0 (Councilwoman Kim Shoe-Corrigan was absent) to approve the plan to push snow to the center of a cul-de-sac instead of plowing snow up on the boulevard, as was done in past years.

"To date, we have plowed our cul-de-sacs to the perimeter of the cul-de-sac. [With this policy in place], we will plow as much as possible to the center of the cul-de-sac, store as much as possible in the center, but recognizing that at times we'll have to come back in with a secondary effort to push the pile up, or depending on the amount of snow, possibly truck snow out," Brotzler said. "[However], one of the primary advantages of this is it reduces the concerns and challenges that we face - and that the property owners face that live in cul-de-sacs- that because of the number of driveways there's less boulevard frontage to source snow in."

Brotzler said that they will give this a "one season trial basis." According to the city, "Staff will review the process in the spring and discuss whether this should become a permanent change."

"Our hope is that this will reduce the number of calls and concerns we have from residents," Brotzler said. "After doing this for a season, we'll be able to evaluate if it was an improvement in our service level for the residents, and also if we were able to do it with the same efficiency as what our prior level was. If it's true, we'd likely consider continuing to move forward with this practice in the future."

Brotzler added that the plowing shouldn't take anymore time to complete an operation than it did in prior years.

Councilman Jeff Weisensel said, "[I'm wondering] were residents going to receive any special letter explaining that they may see snow pile up in cul-de-sacs?"

Brotzler said yes, but that they wanted it to first get approved by Council before sending letters out.