Jackson Street Department shares update on snow removal
JACKSON, Tenn. – With the snow finally moving out, some community members are still struggling with the icy conditions.
Austin Clark, the Public Works Director, stated that the Jackson Street Department worked around the clock to ensure that the roads were safe.
“The only responsibility mainly from the street department standpoint is to maintain specifically our most traveled arterial streets throughout the city,” Clark said.
Aside from the zoned areas that they are designated to salt, the areas that they cover are areas that are of the most importance.
“That’s what we most focus on outside of our emergency centers such as our hospital, our fire departments, and our police stations. All of these take precedence,” Clark said.
Neighborhoods and subdivisions are not included in that maintenance.
“We don’t maintain our neighborhoods. There’s so many of them and we would hate to do specific ones and miss others and you create an issue by doing something like that,” Clark said.
Debra Chapman, a resident of Jackson, says she’s not satisfied with the way the roads look.
“All last week they said they were getting prepared for this and for them to be so prepared, it’s kinda disappointing because roads are really bad,” Chapman said.
Chapman went into further details on the situation.
“I live off a main street, Wallace Road, and for that to be a main street it’s still very treacherous. So I would have thought they would have done better on Wallace and Parkway and Old Hickory and those types. Those are main streets,” Chapman said.
Understanding that this has frustrated some residents, Clark wanted to extend his appreciation to the community.
“We’re all having to deal with it together. We’d like to thank the public for being patient with us as we do as best we can,” Clark said.
Clark stated the Jackson Street Department will have a plan ready to ensure that street damage such as potholes will be fixed after the weather breaks.
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