Roads are Icy but City Says it Can't Get Salt Every Residential Street

ROCKFORD - Unlike last week, the Stateline hasn't seen snow this week - but ice is a different story.  Countless residential side-streets in Rockford are literal sheets of ice, creating hazardous driving conditions. 

The corner of West Gate Parkway and Oregon Avenue has a large patch of ice, which caused 18 year-old Racher Brechler to almost spin-out while trying to avoid our reporter. 

"When I saw you, I slammed on the brakes and just slid," said Brechler.

Brechler apologized, but mentioned that the ice on her street and the spin-out that almost happened to her is not uncommon.

"It gets icy and that's just kind of how it is every winter, but I've never seen this much ice," claims Brechler.

Neighbor, Floyd Raymer says he's lived at the corner of West Gate and Oregon for 30 years.  Every time winter comes around, Raymer says it always gets icy.

"When you come around the corner here, you think you're okay," said Raymer talking about the sheet of ice covering the street in front of his house.

"But once you hit this patch, you're surprised and you can't do anything - you're sliding and spinning out."

That roadway will continue to be icy because the city doesn't salt Oregon Avenue and for that matter many other residential roadways.  Just two weeks ago the city's public works department reported a surplus of salt due to a lack of snow.  But Tim Hanson, director of Rockford Public Works, says because of last week's snow a surplus of salt is not the case anymore.

"We've had ten snow operations since the first of February," said Hanson.

"In that time frame we've almost used up 4,000 tons of salt and if you go in and salt a residential area in addition to arterial roads, you're going to use at least 600 tons of salt in that one snow event."

Beside less salt being available, the city purely doesn't have the manpower to put trucks on the streets.  Hanson says that's a matter of budget cuts to his department.  City trucks do try to salt dangerous areas like intersections and hills.  If you see a dangerous icing situation on a Rockford street you can call the city's Snow & Ice Removal line at (815) 987-5763. 

"Just call in those requests and we'll make sure we get out there and take care of those requests as needed," said Hanson.