KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City, Missouri, residents north of the river often complain that they're forgotten by city leaders, which left Northland neighborhoods still awaiting a snow plow feeling disappointed this week.
"We're still in Kansas City proper, but we're just a little bit disconnected," Kansas City, North, resident Theresa Gaul said. "Seeing all of the other areas of green in Kansas City then seeing the Northland not have that green on the plow maps is really hard."
Gaul's Highland Gardens neighborhood is gray on KCMO’s Snow Operations map and some streets scarcely show a single plow mark.
"I've been watching the interactive map to see where the plows have been — and they've been around our area, but not actually through our neighborhood," Gaul said.
She and several neighbors submitted complaints with KCMO's 311 system, but "we haven't gotten any response from that."
Gaul's neighborhood — parts of which only show tire tracks cutting through the snowpack — isn't the only one still in need of attention after the largest snow event in a generation.
"We're dealing with a difficult situation," City Councilman Nathan Willett, who represents KCMO's 1st District, said. "The thing that I'm most happy about is, whenever we do get complaints, (the city’s) fairly responsive to them, but it is a massive snow. It’s the largest snowstorm since my parents were born."
Willett said the design of many Northland neighborhoods, which often feature cul-de-sacs as opposed to the more traditional grid layout of many neighborhoods south of the Missouri River, contributes to the difficulty in clearing the streets.
Additionally, snow-removal crews in the Northland often rely on pick-up trucks equipped with a plow instead of dump trucks, which are more effective in removing the nearly foot-deep snow that blanketed the Kansas City region.
"The lesson to learn here is, if we weren't able to get to it within 24 hours, we need the bigger plow trucks to come in," Willett said. "The smaller trucks are not going to be able to handle our neighborhoods up here."
The city's overall snow-clearing response has been comparatively robust and efficient, especially given the amount of snowfall, which hasn't gone unnoticed.
"We pretreated a lot of roads," Willett said. "We put a lot of salt in areas I've never seen salt before. But when you put 11 inches of snow on top of that salt, you don't really have a chance."
Roads are going to be a mess. Gaul understands that, but she’d still love to here the grind of a plow-truck blade.
"We got the trucks with salt, so we saw that coming in and we stayed home. We knew the ice was coming in on Saturday and, Sunday, we knew that the trucks weren't going to be around for a little bit," she said, "but now it's been days and days, and we still haven't gotten anything."
Trying to get out of her hilly neighborhood in a compact car is a challenge.
"I completely understand having to be part of the community and be a team player and wait it out," Gaul said. "But also at some point, within 48 to 72 hours of the snowfall, it feels like there has to be someone that remembered we're here. Like, how can we be forgotten? It's not, I know how hard the crews have been working, so I get it. But also, how is no one gotten here yet?"
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KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.