City of Jackson Street Department talks winter storm response

JACKSON, Tenn. — The recent winter storm is still affecting the Hub City. Tuesday the City of Jackson shared how they managed the impact of the storm.

People who live and work in Jackson have expressed concern and frustration over how the streets were managed during the first winter storm of 2026.

On Tuesday, the City of Jackson’s released its timeline on the plan they executed before, during and after the storm. It began with the street department began salting roads in the early hours on Saturday, January the 24.

The city says that approximately 170 tons of salt were distributed across main roads and neighborhood roads that morning.

According to the their timeline, the precipitation began around 5 a.m. on the January 24.

Public Works Director Austin Clark says, “The city did not apply rock salt too early because of traffic along these routes. The traffic would have driven the salt out of the path of the street and into the ditches and gutterways.”

He also claims that all routes were covered with salt before the snowfall began.

With the timeline, on Tuesday, January 27, which was two days after the storm had ended, the city says they made several attempts to clear the streets with plow blades but eventually rented heavy machinery and road graders.

Mayor Scott Conger says that they have emergency contracts, but they did not include graders so they had to get new contracts to help with the cleanup.

“All of our emergency contracts–none of those had graters, so we had to go out and find new contracts. We were exercising our existing emergency contracts and they were telling us that they did not have the equipment, so this will help us going forward as we have on call emergency contracts,” said Mayor Conger.

The timeline says that, later in the week, the city began bringing in contractors to clear the streets. According to Mayor Conger, the city plans to look at how to make the impact on the roads less severe if there is a chance for another storm.

“For us, we want to look at how we can mitigate this going forward. Everything that was clear outside of the interstate and interstate exchanges was cleared by the City of Jackson, madison county, or the contractors that we had,” said Mayor Conger.

According to the city, they are actively reviewing their response to identify improvements and evaluating future needs.

In a poll WBBJ ran, 90% of the people voting rated the city’s performance as poor. This past Friday TDOT crews were approved to began assisting with state routes and major roads in the city.

The city plans to meet with TDOT later this week to discuss operations going forward.

For more news in the Jackson area, click here.