Some of Boulder’s streets became treacherously icy after a brief snowstorm last week blanketed Boulder in about three inches of snow. And the city’s new, more conservative approach to snow and ice removal may help explain why.

Snow plowing — or a lack thereof — has long been a contentious issue in Boulder. But working within the confines of a tight city budget for 2025, crews are now plowing fewer city streets during smaller winter storms that bring only a few inches of snow to town. And numerous residents say the lack of plowing on some streets is creating hazardous conditions.

Kristine Jensen-Smith lives with her husband on University Hill near Eighth Street and Euclid Avenue. After last week’s storm, she said several streets in her neighborhood were not plowed, and some of the streets — including steep, hilly ones like hers — were covered in a “sheet of ice.” Some of the ice still had not melted as of Tuesday morning, a full week after the snow stopped.

Jensen-Smith said she is most concerned about the safety of her elderly neighbors and the families who take their children to school at the nearby Flatirons Elementary School just off of College Avenue.

“(I) don’t want to see somebody get hurt,” she said.

‘Dicey’ conditions on neighborhood streets

The city usually gets 25 to 46 snowfalls each year, and most of them bring fewer than three inches of accumulated snow, according to a city website. As of this winter, when a storm brings three or fewer inches of snow to Boulder, city crews are only plowing “first-priority” streets and multi-use paths.

First-priority streets include major roads with high traffic that are used for transit and emergency response.

The change means other throughways — including steep side streets, alleys and some transit and emergency routes — likely won’t get plowed during most storms.The snowfall last week started late on Jan. 6 and kept coming through the morning of Jan. 7, according to David Barjenbruch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder. Snow totals ranged from about 2.5 to 3.3 inches citywide, and temperatures that day hovered in the mid-20s. Since then, daytime warmth combined with cold temperatures at night have turned some of the snow into ice.

Jensen-Smith said in years past, she’s seen drivers struggle to get up the hill outside her home when the roads were slick. She has watched drivers slide into and hit her and her husband’s vehicles that were parked on the side of the road.

For several years, the city seemed to step up its snow removal efforts in her neighborhood. Jensen-Smith said the city had done plowing and sanding after most storms — but in the past week, the driving and walking conditions in her area have been “dicey.”

Aisha Ozaslan, a spokesperson for Boulder, said the changes to the city’s snow removal policy come after staffers analyzed Boulder’s existing snow protocols and budget. Ultimately, staffers recommended that the city should expand its snow and ice response, but they acknowledged that some of the recommendations couldn’t be implemented without additional funding. Staffers estimated an expanded program would cost $2.69 million to start up and $1.39 million every subsequent year, according to a city website.

Based on the city’s current constrained financial situation, officials have prioritized removing snow on major roads and in severe storms that bring a significant amount of snow. Ozaslan said staffers plan to review the new protocols when the snow season ends, typically around April.

City officials face blowback after recent storm

There are signs the City Council may not want to wait until the spring to discuss Boulder’s snow response. Earlier this week, City Councilmember Mark Wallach sent out a public email message calling for a conversation about snow removal in light of the many, “entirely negative” comments from the public that began streaming in after last week’s storm.

Wallach told the Daily Camera snow plowing should be one of “the basics” in terms of the services a city government offers its citizens, along with repairing potholes and putting out fires.

He said dozens of community members have reached out about the snow removal issue recently and he wants to see more city resources dedicated to plowing streets.

“It is not a staff problem. They do the best they can do with very limited resources, and they have to come up with some kind of plan for allocating those resources,” he said. “… But you’ve got to address some unsafe conditions, and that’s what we have.”

Councilmember Matthew Benjamin said he had also heard from numerous community members and that, while road conditions have gotten much better over the past few days, some streets, especially east-west streets that don’t get as much sunlight, are “pretty diabolically icy.” He said people have fallen getting into their cars, vehicles have slid off the road, and he’s seen delivery vehicles unable to make it up certain streets.

“The root cause was a lack of plowing. Had that snow been pushed off or mostly removed from the roadway, that snow wouldn’t have been packed down, melted and then refrozen as solid ice,” he said.

Benjamin said he doesn’t expect the city to start plowing all of the streets every time it snows, but he wants to see Boulder’s snow response become more “dynamic” and responsive to conditions on the ground.

“This shouldn’t be a contentious issue. I mean, everybody’s paying taxes into this thing, and if our roads aren’t safe because we’re just ignoring them, I think we can do better,” he said. “We just need to do it.”