Township roads are not just country roads between fields. Township responsibilities include rural subdivisions like Hunter’s Glen, Holiday Valley, Echo Hills, West Enon, and Tiffany Acres.
And with those subdivisions comes the complications caused by those who leave parked vehicles along the roads.
Mad River Twp. Road Department’s Don O’Conner has a crew of four drivers of the big snowplows and each of them has a township road route. He also contracts with a company with smaller plows to help with Green Meadows and Holliday Valley which has tighter turns which the larger plows find difficult.
Holiday Valley is unusual since some of the residents think they are in Enon and others think they are in Greene County because they have a Fairborn address.
All of Holiday Valley is in Mad River Township in Clark County. They just get mail delivered by Fairborn because of a delivery route set up decades ago.
Streets in Enon are plowed by Enon’s road crew, which would also appreciate folks getting those parked vehicles out of the way.
Larger county roads like Dayton, Rebert Pike and Fairfield are cleared by the Clark County Road Crew.
Route 68 is a State Route and ODOT is in charge of its clearing in addition to part of I-675 and I-70
Over in Bethel, Pike, and Springfield townships, the road cleaning and repairing responsibilities are divided into the same categories; township, city, county, and state.
And all of us, no matter what road we live on, are responsible for our own sidewalks and driveways. People who live in rural subdivisions just like those in villages and cities need to arrange for their own sidewalk and driveway plowing. We even have to clean out the end of our driveway way out in the country.
Folks find it frustrating to have to shovel out the end of their driveway every time the plow comes through. To make it worse they cannot throw snow back onto roads just as they shouldn’t put cut grass cuttings on the roadways in the summer. The snow has to go onto the lawn...or into snowmen.
Please note the snow plow crews are not blocking driveways on purpose. Their priority has to be making those streets passable.
Now some people arrange with a private company in advance to clear the end of the drive way, or if they are lucky they contribute to a local teenagers’ mad money. I’ve even heard of neighbors helping out with this.
Business parking lots are cleared by the owners. School Districts clear their own parking and sidewalks.
No matter how heavy or light the snow and ice layers are, road clearing cannot go as fast as we want it to go especially if we have some place to be.
Remember next time that there is something that each of us can do to make the process go more quickly.
Moving all parked vehicles, RVs, trailers, etc. off the streets makes the plowing go faster. This seriously will make the street cleaning neater, and quicker. Once the snow stops and is cleared, the vehicles can be moved back. Or maybe it is time to find a better place to store that RV?
Some homeowners take their civic responsibility one step farther by removing the ice and snow piles around the fire hydrants, being careful not to strike it or chip the paint. Making sure that firefighters are not slowed down even a minute by having to clear the ice off the hydrant can make a difference. Every second is important in firefighting.
We may be done with snow for the winter, or we may have another round of it. No way to know. Key word here is patience.
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