February 2, 2015 Snowstorm

2 Feb

Many of you may have noticed we received an abundance of snow over the past 24 hours.  Please be aware that Bill’s Outdoor Care has cleared the main roads a couple times during the night, and will return for a final cleanup of the entire subdivision, today.

Please also keep your vehicles parked in the driveway for the time being (not in the street), so as to allow Bill’s Outdoor Care easy access to our streets.

Also note: while in most cases snow removal occurs relatively quickly, our snow removal contract provides a 24-hour window in which to complete the roads.  Since this is the largest single snow storm we’ve had in over 30 years, please allow the full 24 hours (after the completion of a snow storm) for the roads to be completed.

21 Replies to “February 2, 2015 Snowstorm

  1. Uh, I beg to differ with you. I have not heard or seen any snowplows in our sub. I live on Shiloh Ct. and none of us could get out of our shoveled off driveways and onto the street because, as of 1:15pm, Feb 2, our street has not been touched. I could not get to work this morning, as I watched 2 of my neighbors get stuck and give up. We all lost $. Now I am worried about the roads for tomorrow. Could something please be done about this? Thank you.

  2. He may have cleaned some streets during the storm but has not touched Vicksburg Ct. We have 18 inches of snow still on the ground.

    Several of us could not get out to go to work because of this.

  3. I see that the main streets in the neighborhood have been plowed, & as you’ve said on the site a couple times in the night, however our court, Vicksburg, has NOT been plowed ONCE & IT IS NOW 1:45PM Monday afternoon! Nobody in our Court has been able to leave their home today! Where is my additional association fee going to?

  4. This has been an on-going issue and would apprreciate you discussing this with his company. We also have elderly residents and young children on this court. If there was an emergency, there would be no way for emergency vehicles to get down our court.

    Some of us have resorted to snow-blowing the street. I hope we get a refund for our time spent doing his job.

  5. Where did he plow during the night? Not Verdun Court! In fact I went out at 2:15 pm today and if they are the same company that plows Nowland he was doing their streets. I expected that when I got home Verdun would have been plowed since part of it belongs to Nowland Estates but when I returned home at 4:00 I found that all he has done is gone down the middle of the streets making the situation worse. I could at least get down the street because the snow was broken up. Instead I had a hard time getting back into my driveway because of the snow drifts he has created by plowing only the center of the road. Where two cars could carefully get down the street he had now created a one lane road and the intersection at Verdun and Yorktown is practically impassable.

  6. Someone needs to call this guy and find out where he is. Why would he just go down the middle of the streets and the leave? I can tell you why. Because he thinks he us making all of his customers happy by making “paths” down their streets instead of doing a complete job and then going on to his next job. He didn’t evendo a proper job at the intersection of Nowland and Shelton. He left large piles if snow that a car could potentially get stuck in instead of plowing the entire aporoach. THIS COMPANY REALLY STINKS.

  7. Yes it’s ne again! Imagine my surprise when I looked up Bill’s Outdoor Service and found that their address is actually on Fredricksburg in our sobdivision. Bet Fredricksbufg is plowed just fine!

  8. If the company says they cleared the roads several times, they NEVER touched Argonne Ct until 3:30 this afternoon. I’m not sure your definition of touching the roads, but you need to have a conversation with them. As our dues are going up, if this is the type of service that we are to expect, than and new plow service needs to be looked at. This as been an issue year in and year out with this company. Again this is unacceptable service for the amount we pay compared to other Canton subdivision associations. If there was an emergency, these roads were impassable.

    You need to consider that time that we have to take care of the streets in front of our residence. So you need to rethink the unreasonable dues for this type of service.

  9. I know the board sees all these complaints, so I’ll be devil’s advocate for a moment, and defend Bill’s Outdoor Care.

    Our service contract specifies that snow will be removed within 24 hours of the end of a storm. Was it a close call, this time? Yes. Would it have been better if it was finished earlier? Yes. But did they do anything wrong? No. They fulfilled their contract. And in my opinion, the quality was impressive; I did a drive-through of the subdivision, and in many places I could actually see the curb.

    I hope nobody is surprised when I point out that – no matter what snow removal service we hire – they always take care of their businesses first, before they do any residential areas. I also would like to point out that I have a lot of friends in other subdivisions; many of them were still stuck under 16 inches of snow when we were finally plowed out yesterday.

    Lastly, I hope nobody is leaning too heavily on the argument that “we’re paying more for dues, so we are entitled to better service.” That’s not true for a couple reasons; firstly, because nobody has actually paid dues for 2015 yet. You can’t expect better service from our 2014 contracts. Secondly, because the increased dues are needed to maintain our current level of service. We could not afford them, without. If we didn’t increase the dues, we might still be stuck under snow, because we wouldn’t be able to afford anyone.

    • We don’t expect better service with increased dues. We expect all of the streets in the subdivision to be plowed. If the company came out several times and skipped the courts several times I think that is even more infuriating to the residence who live in the courts.

  10. After the snow removal company went through Monday afternoon in the proctor\yorktown area.. I cleaned my sidewalks as they are a main path for children walking to Bentley and also 3 bus pick ups are done at corner of proctor & yorktown. I get home from work today at 1:15 and see this company has gone thru Yorktown again kicking up all the frozen stuff from yesterday. Now those sidewalk sections that were cleared to street allowing for access to crossing over and for children to board busses are blocked with FROZEN stuff from yesterday. If this owner resides in our sub he should be aware of school walking and bus boarding . a little common sense goes a long way! Where’s the safety for children?

  11. I think the pattern here is that there were no courts in the subdivision that were touched.

    Instead of always being defensive about concerns and feedback why don’t you try and listen to the concern. A good response would be that you did notice there were several courts not plowed during the snowstorm while other streets were. We will take that feedback to Bills Outdoor Care.

    Touting the fact that Bills Outdoor Care did us all a favor and plowed some streets just leave a sour taste.

    • The sad part is that Verdun Court is not actually a court. It was opened up to connect our sub with Nowland estates when it was built.

  12. As I stated in my email to the board they skipped Antietam Ct. Seems they skipped all of the courts from the comments above. Residents in the courts pay dues just like the residents on the main roads. It does not seem right that the courts were skipped completely until the next evening. Even when they were plowed they weren’t done the best. My husband went out with the snowblower and cleared the snow in the streets more after the plows came through.

  13. I’m with Joy. I really like how they dump the snow all over the sidewalk intersections. I know it has to go somewhere, but there is literally 5 feet of snow on the sidewalk intersection. How am I supposed to dig that out?

    Oh, and slow down for my kids!! You nearly hit them with your truck

  14. This was a very big snow. I don’t think anyone could have done it better for the price we pay. $100/year is rock bottom. It would probably still be $50 but half the slackers in this sub don’t pay. Some subs pay this much a month! I’m sure if people want to pay $30,000/year for a plowing contract we’d have spotless streets. But our dues will be $125/month.

    This near-record snow was an inconvenience but I was satisfied. Life isn’t perfect. It comes with snowstorms, earthquakes and fires.

    And kudos to the board volunteers that keep us from having to hire a PM company that would quadruple our dues and pocket 50% of it.

  15. I am the owner of the company. We have 24hrs from the stop of the snowstorm. As the weather people kept changing the expected totals we decided to have some trucks run through the subs. This is not in our contract to plow in the middle of a snowstorm. We plowed all the main roads through the sub starting at 320pm on feb 1st We did not go into the courts as we were opening up the subs from mailbox to mailbox. When we started plowing they were saying up to 10 inches of snow. We plowed the roads and there was 4.5 inches of snow at that time.

    While everyone was sleeping it snowed at 1 inch an hour with 30 mph winds. This left drifts of 2 feet deep. We ended up getting 16.7 inches of snow. The snowfall did not stop till just after 5am on Feb 2nd I had two crews in sub plowing starting at 238pm and finishing up at 537pm So when we finished the sub it was just over 12hours after the stop of snowfall. Well within our contract time frame. The plowing would of gone better had it not been for homeowners screaming and cussing and jumping in front of plow trucks upset that snow is being pushed into there driveway. We are paid to plow the streets not clean your drive. We dont time our plowing to your shoveling at your home. We are not paid to clean the end of your driveway. Also leaving cars on the streets on a snow emergency makes it hard to plow the street. And most people that left there car on street left it in front of homes that did not belong. So then they didnt get there mail ect. The mail didnt delivery to any subs on Feb 2nd because they couldnt get into anyones sub.

    If you drive through any sub an place in the entire area you will see that every corner has giant piles on them. If there is 16.7 inches of snow in the road your going to have a giant mound in your drive walk corner ect. In regards to nowland sheldon trashed…yes it was. And why was this? Because after we plowed it wayne county came and pushed snow from sheldon back in. And we had already finished plowing the sub. Whey was proctor not blocked? Because i was plowing the road same time they came by. THere is no way to plow and not stack the snow on corners as you could not properly clean each intersection. As for speeding in sub? You tell me how someone was speeding through over a foot of snow? And if we were plowing the sub why would your kids be playing by the road?

    Go through subs and look how close the plowing is to the mailboxes in other subs. We used our dump truck loaded with salt for extra weight to push back the final pass in sub so people could get there mail Most subs only had a pickup truck which dosnt have the weight to push back a wall of snow that was higher then our plows and went up to and onto hood of dump truck.

    I should of plowed at least one pass through the courts. the reason we didnt is the crews had already worked so much over past couple days and knew it was going to be a ruff couple of days. Some of the workers plowed for 30 hrs straight before they were sent home to rest. I personally went just over 40hrs to handle this storm. We then had to turn around and plow again on the 4th. It stopped snowing just after 7pm. The sub was plowed from end to end starting at 10pm which was 3 hours after stop of snowfall.

    With a snowfall that is 3rd worse in recorded history, you need to understand there are going be issues. Even if you could of gotten out of sub monday morning. you would of not gotten very far. The only reason we got around was due to our trucks which had hard time getting around. All the ramps were blocked due to drifted snow and cars stuck in them. Instead of trashing the web site you should look into the contract that is in place and finding out the facts of a contract in place. We were well within the scope of work.

    Bill

    • Bill, you have a couple greatful people on our court (and no, not your street). I realize that 17″ of snow can’t be removed in 4 hours or even 8 hours. It takes 2 days. And plowing a single path on every street first, then widening later made perfect sense. Thank you.

  16. I feel that our snow removal was done as quickly as was humanly possible considering the amount of snow that we had. It is always better to have snow removal rather than have impassable roadways.

  17. Excuses, Excuses…..I”m an air traffic controller, there are no excuses. Just get it done and do it right. We had to snow blow our Cul de Sac in order to get out. It was more than 24 hours before we were plowed. We get what we pay for. I moved here from Chicago. Our Assoc. dues were $125. a quarter. $500 a year, but we had 5 times better snow service, an olympic swimming pool, and a 1st class club house. if we paid more in dues we would get better results. We live with what we deserve. There is only one way to improve our circumstances, money.

  18. Hi folks,

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