AURORA - After the latest winter storm dumped closed to a foot of snow on the metro area, residents of the Havana Heights neighborhood are left with a big mess.
SLIDESHOW OF SNOW ACROSS COLORADO
Large piles of snow in the streets are catching cars, and even SUVs are having a hard time not getting stuck.
Marty Kurzdorfer has lived in Havana Heights for 17 years and says his street has been plowed once, after a blizzard five years ago.
"I've seen people stuck all over the place. It's slippery out there," Kurzdofer said.
Kurzdorfer worries his streets may get even more slippery in the days to come.
"It can turn into ice and then people can fall down," Kurzdorfer said.
The AAA Colorado roadside assistance call center in Denver is expecting a busy holiday weekend of emergency calls after the winter storm dumped nearly a foot of snow on the metro area.
"Our volume has been about twice our normal call volume," AAA spokesperson Wave Dreher said.
Many of those calls are coming from snow and ice covered neighborhoods, which could grow more treacherous as the snow melts then re-freezes.
In the cities of Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, Thornton, Centennial, and Boulder, snow plows are dispatched on a priority system.
Priority one streets get plowed first. Those are major roads that often lead to emergency services like hospitals and fire stations.
Next are priority two streets, which are either major or minor roads that allow access to schools and business areas.
Priority three roads are next. Those are neighborhood streets and are often last to be plowed and after the priority roads get attention.
Even then, often a certain amount of snow needs to have fallen before snow plows move into neighborhoods.
Denver Public Works spokeswoman Ann Williams says the City of Denver only plows side streets as an emergency measure.
That's partly due to the cost of activating an entire fleet of pickup trucks to plow.
"To do one deployment of close to 200 residential plows to hit all the side streets in Denver once is about $300,000," Williams said.
The cost is considerably less in Centennial, where it will cost $20,000 to plow neighborhood streets.
Interim City Manager David Zelenok says the city had an end-of-year budget surplus which allowed the city to cover the expense.
"Centennial has not plowed residential streets in years, but this storm is unusual. We think that the freeze thaw problems could create a layer of ice on top of the packed snow," Zelenok said.
Denver has a list of criteria that a storm must meet in order to activate residential plowing.
The storm has to be between Nov. 15 and March 15 and it has to be forecast to drop more than 12 inches of snow.
The storm also has to be accompanied by an extended period of sub-freezing temperatures, which is not the case this time.
Williams says she understands the frustration drivers have now, but the cost of plowing isn't worth it in this case, with temperatures expected to get above 50 degrees by the end of the holiday weekend.
Other local governments in Colorado typically make side streets the lowest priority for snow removal, and some cities and counties won't plow them at all without a certain depth of snow.
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