Fairfax County supervisors piled on the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) yesterday, criticizing the agency’s response to the Jan. 6-7 snowstorm — and what local leaders saw as a seeming indifference to concerns raised about it.
“You failed miserably, [and] it doesn’t seem to me you have a plan to go forward. All you have are excuses, and I don’t want to hear excuses,” Mason District Supervisor Andres Jimenez said during a Tuesday (April 8) meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Transportation Committee.
Jimenez was just one of a number of supervisors who complained VDOT officials seemed to arrive at the meeting with a tone-deaf response to the situation. A prepared presentation emphasized messaging and managing community expectations.
“You’ve got a very frustrated community,” Sully District Supervisor Kathy Smith said. “They didn’t feel heard.”
Fairfax officials had expressed frustration with VDOT’s snow-clearing efforts in the immediate aftermath of the January storm, which extended winter break for Fairfax County Public Schools students by four days due to the challenging road conditions.
The mood at the April 9 meeting, however, was even more contentious.
A visibly agitated Dranesville District Supervisor Jimmy Bierman said VDOT pronouncements that all neighborhood streets had received at least one pass from a plow were “simply not accurate,” based on his own experience.
“I have eyes,” said Bierman, who was chairing the meeting.
On the receiving end of the pummeling was a trio of VDOT officials, who contended that the response to the January storm was hampered by extreme cold before, during and after the snow fell.
They were not willing to concede the department’s response was significantly lacking, given the difficult conditions involved.
“We do have a plan. We did achieve many of our goals. We were able to provide passable roads for our community,” said Bill Cuttler, VDOT’s district engineer for Northern Virginia.
However, the supervisors weren’t buying what the VDOT officials were selling.
“‘Passable’ in my neighborhood was laughable,” said Jimenez, who expressed concerns that state officials weren’t learning lessons from the experience.
“I have gotten a sense today you’re not going to do better,” he said.
Cuttler suggested that what the public saw as unaddressed neighborhood streets were in fact roads that had been plowed, only for the remaining snowpack turn to ice in the frigid temperatures.
According to Ellen Kamilakis, who oversees public affairs for VDOT’s Northern Virginia district, the local area in winter typically sees either extreme cold or plentiful snow — but seldom both at the same time, as was the case in early January.
“It had direct impacts on our infrastructure and how we respond,” Kamilakas said.
Bierman noted that, in his district, he received no complaints about plowing efforts in Great Falls, while McLean conditions were a mess for days.
That inconsistency was one of the most maddening parts of the experience, he said.
“Next time there’s a deep freeze, we need to do better,” Bierman said. “We’ve got to do better.”
When it comes to neighborhood streets, VDOT considers one “passable” if there is a path of between 8 and 11 feet for emergency vehicles to travel through.
“We have always committed to making them passable, but not having a bare pavement,” said Monica Bhatia, deputy administrator for VDOT’s Northern Virginia district.
The Jan. 6-7 storm dropped between 5 and 10 inches of snow across the region. A storm deposited roughly the same amount in mid-February, but because temperatures were warmer, that clearing effort went more smoothly.
“You did a wonderful job in February,” Bierman acknowledged.
County Executive Bryan Hill found himself brought into the middle of the back-and-forth, saying that from his perspective, VDOT’s goal of at least one pass through every street within 36 hours “did not happen.”
However, he suggested the focus should be on making things better going forward, rather than relitigating past events.
Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said she hoped neither county leaders nor VDOT officials would dig in their heels after the tempestuous meeting.
“I don’t think finger-pointing is going to get us anywhere,” she said.
As the nearly hour-long discussion rolled on, that view seemed to take hold.
“We are listening,” Kamilakas said.
Cuttler said he recognizes that “people are not satisfied” and promised toward the meeting’s conclusion that VDOT would “look at our processes from beginning to end.”
“We are working to change the culture in our organization,” he said.
