Aldermen Lyle & Brookins frets about political response to blizzard

Men with snow-blowers clean 98th Street Wed. afternoon

UPDATE 3:01 PM For more on the political response to snow read a posting from Progress Illinois called: "The Politics Of Snow". They also refer to the Chgo News Coop article referred to below.

Chgo News Coop:

“We don’t have all the equipment that we need because it is all on the North Side, because they are concerned with Lake Shore Drive,” said Ald. Freddrenna Lyle, who represents the 6th Ward on the South Side and faces challengers in the coming election. “Either we laid off too many people and we can’t provide services to the entire city or people once again don’t understand that the heart of the city is its neighborhoods.”
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“Once they had the main streets clear and the snow had stopped falling, they should have started sending salt spreaders through the neighborhoods,” said Ald. Howard Brookins (21st). “Now it will be more difficult. When it gets colder and everything freezes, the salt is not going to do much good.”

Like Brookins, Lyle said her ward did not receive help until about 10 p.m. Wednesday, many hours after the storm was over.

“I have people out there who can’t get to work because we don’t have the right equipment,” Lyle said. “They were looking for a sign that the city was coming to bail them out. The mains were clear by then. People want to know where the hell the trucks were?”

On Thursday morning, as she spoke on her cell phone, the phones in her ward office rang with calls from what she said were irate constituents.

“Everybody who calls ends the message with something like, ‘You know this is election season,’” Lyle said, her voice hoarse from a cold. “No, I didn’t know, thanks for reminding me.”

Lyle mentioned how Mayor Michael Bilandic lost his job at the polls after failing to deal with the Blizzard of 1979. But she said voters should not blame their alderman when they go to the polls in less than three weeks: “Nobody wants this to be their Waterloo because we don’t control it.”

Well this article is more about the quotes of two neighboring Aldermen. Read the whole thing about the criticism of how the city handled the blizzard.