Molly Tumanic

Junior Leslie Klatt parks her car in the Oak Ridge lot.

While the task traditionally is an easy one, lately she has had trouble navigating past what she refers to as a “snow mountain” in the lot.

“(Sunday night) when I pulled into the Oak Ridge lot I pulled in crooked and decided to straighten myself out to allow more room for the next car to fit in,” she said.

“When I backed up, I became engorged in the snow mountain down the middle of the lane.”

When she tried to pull forward, her car got stuck again, Klatt said, because of an abundance of snow in the parking space.

Last week proved to be a rough one for the grounds crew of Facilities Planning and Management.

The crew has been inundated with 18 inches of snow since Feb. 1, according to Bob Trihy, meteorologist at WQOW 18. The excessive snowfall has resulted in an accumulation of snow throughout campus parking lots.

The snowfall made parking more difficult for senior Angie Petrie, who has experienced problems in the Chancellors Hall lot.

Petrie has difficulty getting into parking spots because of snow build-up and drifting, she said.

“I had to shovel my car out after spinning the wheels so much that my car smelt like it was burning,” she said.

Randy Palmer, grounds manager, said he has received complaints from Housing and Residence Life and from students, but assured that his crew members are doing the best they can to remove the snow.

Each location on campus has a certain priority on the list of places to shovel and plow, Palmer said.

After a snowfall measures at least an inch, the grounds crew addresses these priorities, split into two groups – high priority and secondary priority.

There are four areas of high priority on campus.

First, there is emergency vehicle access, which includes roads on campus starting with residence hall areas.

Second, the grounds crew removes snow from main sidewalks, including the footbridge, and clears a way for academic building access.

Third, the crew tends to the Garfield Avenue hill, its roadway and sidewalks. In addition, they clear the snow from Garfield Avenue and the sidewalks that run along it.

Last on the high priority list is the faculty/staff and commuter parking lots, including Phillips, Haas, Hibbard and campus parking meters.

The four secondary priorities – the loading docks, sidewalks behind buildings, residence hall parking lots and Putnam Drive – have all suffered, Palmer said. This is because each time more snow falls, the crew must focus on the high priorities, even if the lower priorities have not yet been tended to. This results in the accumulation of snow in the residence hall lots.

Because of the continuous snow, the six grounds crew members and a mechanic each put in between 20 and 30 hours of overtime within the last week, Palmer said.

He said he did not have his crew members work Sunday because they had been working 60 to 70 hours a week.

“They were tired,” he said. “They needed a day at home.”

Parked cars and the constant snowfall have made it difficult for the grounds crew to keep the residence hall lots clear, Palmer said.

Towers lot, he said, takes nearly half a day for several people to clear.

With a focus on clearing snow from the main arterial routes for safety reasons, there is not much time or manpower remaining for the lower priority lots, Palmer said.

“There are only so many hours in a day,” he said.

The grounds crew at UW-Stout has a similar priority list when it comes to snow removal, said Lynn Peterson, grounds supervisor.

The crew first clears snow from high-traffic areas around campus, such as near the student center and the library, she said.

Like Eau Claire, commuter lots also are high on the list, while storage (residence) lots are a low priority.

“Storage lots pose big problems because the cars don’t move,” she said. “We can only clear lanes and access areas. We can’t just ask everyone for them to move their cars.”

Another problem Stout has is budget limitations.

“It is a fine dance to do the best to make things safe while trying to work within reduced budgets,” Peterson said.

Palmer said his crew lost a position last year because of budget cuts, but the budget still allows between 150 and 700 hours of overtime per school year. Typically, the crew uses 450 hours during the course of the winter, he said.

“So far we have used 250 hours, most of which has come in the last two weeks,” Palmer said.

Gary Bartlett, parking and transportation services coordinator, said students must have common sense when it comes to snow.

If snow is building up near a student’s car, he said, that person needs to take out a shovel and clean up the area around their car.

In addition, those who leave their cars parked for extended periods of time tend to be those who have problems with the snow, he said.

Palmer agreed.

“Some cars don’t even move all winter,” he said of the cars parked in the residence hall lots.

Klatt, who is president of the Oak Ridge Hall Council, said she has discussed the snow removal problems at her meetings.

One solution she has been discussing is moving all cars to one side of the residence hall parking lot to allow plow crews to clear otherwise untouchable areas.

Palmer said he has heard this suggestion before, but there is one problem: The lots are too full for such an endeavor.

“We don’t have anywhere to move the cars,” he said.