By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Snow’s coming. Maybe not tomorrow, or next week or even by Christmas.
But you can bet that snow will fall sometime this winter at the shore.
Remember the coastal storm that dumped a foot of snow on Sea Isle City on Jan. 3, 2022, or the two-day blizzard later that month that buried the town in about 14 inches of the white stuff?
When it does snow, Sea Isle plans to take advantage of a partnership with Cape May County to help keep the roads clear during winter storms.
City Council is expected at its meeting Tuesday to approve a shared services agreement with the county to formalize the snowplowing pact for the winter of 2023-2024. Sea Isle had a similar agreement with the county for snowplowing in the winter of 2022-2023.
Under the agreement, Sea Isle’s municipal snowplows will take charge of clearing Landis Avenue and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, two key arteries that are county roads.
The gazebo overlooking Sea Isle City's oceanfront Promenade is covered with snow during a storm on Jan. 3, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Sea Isle City)
In the past, the city operated on an informal basis to ensure county roads were salted and plowed by municipal equipment when the need arose.
But the new shared services agreement will formalize the operation so that Sea Isle will be reimbursed at a rate of $162 per hour, per truck, for any snowplowing, salting or brining services it provides on county roads, according to a copy of the agreement.
Previously, the county snowplows would clear Landis Avenue, the main corridor running north-south through town. Sea Isle’s plows would clear snow from the side streets. But there were conflicts, Mayor Leonard Desiderio pointed out.
“I feel it’s a better program because as you know, when the county plows go down Landis, they plow Landis. We would plow the side streets, so we would be pushing the snow back on each other. So now we’ll all be doing one job,” he explained last year when Sea Isle and the county first entered into the shared services agreement.
Desiderio also said then that Sea Isle is in a better position to respond more quickly and effectively when a snowstorm occurs because it already has snowplows in town, instead of having to wait for the county’s plow trucks to arrive.
The shared services agreement was considered a pilot program to start in 2022. City officials indicated that Sea Isle and the county would continue to do it in years to come if it proved successful to start.
“Shared services agreements are good ways for municipalities to benefit from neighboring government organizations that have skilled laborers and resources that can benefit their community. As Mayor Desiderio has said many times, ‘Working together, we can achieve great things’ – and shared services agreements are fine examples of that,” city spokeswoman Katherine Custer said.
