Mat-Su to field live snowplow tracking, driveway berm removal for some residents

What you need to know:

• A new tracking system for snowplows operated by Mat-Su Borough contractors will allow residents to monitor the progress of road maintenance. It will go live in the coming months.
• The feature is part of a series of road contracts that were renegotiated earlier this year. They also include a requirement that the contractor serving a pair of regions remove any berms left near driveways during plowing. The area receiving that service was selected based on cost.
• Residents who experience problems with road service can report them through a borough-managed website.

PALMER – A new system that tracks snowplow progress in many Mat-Su neighborhoods will soon be ready for public use as part of a series of changes required under road maintenance contracts refreshed this spring, borough officials said.

Matanuska-Susitna Borough officials are currently testing the live tracker, which will allow users to monitor contractors' plowing progress in real time. A public version is expected in the next few months, they said.

Update: The snowplow tracking went live Nov. 19.

A second new change this year requires the contractor overseeing about 100 miles of roads across a southern section of the borough’s core area to clear all snow berms left near driveways during plowing. The areas with the service were selected based on cost to the borough, officials said. Residents in other areas can expect berms up to 12 inches, as allowed in past years, they said.

Both the live-tracking requirement and berm removal are part of nine Road Service Area contracts renegotiated earlier this year and awarded to five companies. The new contracts, valued at a combined $15 million, also prohibit contractors from submitting extra invoices when homeowners illegally push snow from their properties into the streets.

The new contracts cover plowing and maintenance for about 800 of the borough’s more than 1,100 miles of maintained roads. They include Road Service Areas 9 (Midway); 14 (Fairview); 17 (Knik); 20 (Greater Willow); 25 (Bogard); 28 (Gold Trail); 21 (Big Lake); 27 (Meadow Lakes); and 29 (Greater Talkeetna).

Seven additional contracts, which cover outlying regions such as Trapper Creek and two areas north and south of Colony High School, will be renegotiated next spring to include live tracking and possible berm removal, officials said.

The road service contracts do not include streets within Palmer, Wasilla and Houston city limits.

While plow live tracking is common in the Lower 48, Alaska communities have been slow to adopt it, borough officials said. Anchorage plans to begin live tracking its city-owned plows by the end of this year, officials there announced last month.

In Mat-Su, implementing the program poses an additional challenge because the borough does not own its own fleet and instead contracts all road services to private companies, said Tom Adams, the borough’s public works director.

The tracking requirement has raised some privacy concerns among contractors that officials are still addressing, and one of the five contractors has yet to comply, he said. Adams declined to identify the noncompliant contractor, the areas it serves or the roads not yet tracked.

“There’s a little resistance to change, and we’re just trying to break through that mentality,” he said.

Adams said they plan to make the system public but want to ensure it is functioning well first.

“We thought we would use a couple of different weather events to monitor and make sure we didn’t have any major bugs that made us look foolish,” he said.

While all road contractors are required to use the tracking system, the no-berm requirement, which requires additional personnel and equipment, was ordered by region based on pricing, officials said.

Only first-time contractor Battleground LLC, which was awarded contracts worth about $2 million for Road Service Areas 9 and 14, offered a low enough price. Those areas include neighborhoods east of Knik-Goose Bay Road to just west of the intersection of Trunk Road and Palmer-Wasilla Highway.

Battleground, co-owned by Clayton “Ben” Tew Jr., was awarded the contracts after the Mat-Su Assembly granted an ethics waiver this spring allowing his father former Assembly member Clayton “Mokie” Tew to work as a consultant for the company less than a year after leaving office. The ethics rule is designed to prevent public officials from profiting from contracts they may have influenced.

Residents can find their Road Service Area on the borough’s website and report unplowed streets or problems using the borough’s online problem reporter. The number of complaints affects contractors’ performance ratings, which influence their eligibility for future contracts.

Under the terms of the borough’s road contracts, operators must remove snow on a rolling basis during weather events, starting when accumulation reaches four inches, Adams said. Contractors must also plow around mailboxes and cul-de-sacs, though snow storage at the end of cul-de-sacs is allowed. Berms must be removed immediately from driveways in RSAs 9 and 14, he said. Berms up to 12 inches, measured from the homeowner’s side, are allowed in all other areas.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com.

This story was updated Nov. 5 to fix a typo in the bullet point summary.