Winter weather focal point at Sycamore City Council

By JESSICA SABBAH

The damages caused by the weekend’s ice storm and upcoming weather issues were the main topics at Monday night’s Sycamore City Council.

“We had 18 calls for service in five hours and nine of them were in the first hour,” said Sycamore Fire Chief Bill Riddle.

Some of those were very simple calls, cable wires that moved, normal ambulance calls, Riddle said.

Riddle said there were five firefighters on duty and 17 were called back to work.

“Some of those folks stayed all night on the high powered utility wires that were down Plank Road,” he said.

About 100 Sycamore residents were without power due to the storm.

“There were indeed as of late last night still about a 100 homes that has been in the city’s jurisdiction that still had not got their power restored,” said City Manager Bill Nicklas. “These were, in almost every case, on occasion were owned to the fact that limbs had fallen on their service route from a pole to their house.”

Nicklas praised ComEd for being communicative through the weekend as ComEd sent crews to tend to the powerless houses.

Fred Busse, director of public works, said citizens should not push snow into the roadways during the upcoming winter season. The small ridges freeze, causing road conditions to be worse than if a foot of snow was on the road, Busse said.

“If you happen to see anybody [push snow into the roadway] please say something,” Busse said. “We will report it to the authorities and the Police Department can direct it.”

No one from the community spoke at the public hearing regarding the 2007 corporate levy that was placed on first reading.

“The purpose of all this was to maximize public input and dialogue within the community,” Nicklas said. “I’m disappointed that the public hearing on the city’s levy didn’t generate any of these. But it is certainly not because people don’t care about their property tax, but I don’t know how to read it.”

The next council meeting will be held Dec. 17.