Snow Gates

Public Works’ Central Shop employees design and build more than two dozen Snow Gates


Employees in the Central Shop of Public Works went above-and-beyond to lessen a wintertime source of aggravation for property owners – and save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
 
For the past several years, Public Works has installed a few more snow gates on our fleet of graders. They can only be used in curbed (urban) residential areas and not countywide. The gates help block snow from being pushed into driveways and blocking them. But the snow gates also cost $10-12 thousand each and installing them on a grader requires hours of additional work – which raises the overall cost. But all that has changed thanks to a team of county employees.  

According to County Commissioner Al French, the employees in the Central Shop took on the task of designing and building more than two dozen new snow gates that are customized for our equipment and much more efficient to install. “Each of the new gates cost less than half of the retail cost to build.  As a result of their efforts, these employees have saved county taxpayers approximately $200,000.  Now, that’s impressive!” French said. 

Again – snow gates are only used in curbed (urban) residential neighborhoods and are not effective countywide. Consequently, not every grader is equipped with a snow gate. However, the welders and fabricators in the county’s Central Shop plan to build more snow gates next year.
Snow Gates-1

(L. to R.) County Commissioner Al French is joined by County Engineer Matt Zarecor and Public Works Senior Director Kyle Twohig in admiring one of the employee-designed and fabricated snow gates.