How did City Leaders Do in Responding to Last Week's Storms?

Against the backdrop of last week's snow and ice storms, city leaders met Wednesday to pow wow about what worked well and what needed improvement for the next city-wide emergency situation.

Leaders including Mayor Liz Reynolds, Police Chief Jim Zoll and various representatives of local agencies including the School District and St. Elizabeth Hospital were in attendance.

Full Disclosure: as Patch was invited to the meeting, we did arrive near the end and missed a large portion of the discussion.

However, in an earlier conversation with Shelly Pricco, director of Patient Care Services at the hospital, the leaders were pleased with what they said was seamless communication between the various agencies in terms of immediate needs including road closures and aid response information. (.)

Mayor Reynolds suggested that the city needs to do more to prepare residents for the next emergency, including reminding folks before storm season to start checking those generators and make sure they're operational and using local media to help spread information.

Chief Zoll added that batteries were an important item to have too. Shortly after the power failure last week, "you couldn't find a D cell battery in this town," he said.

Another representative suggested directing residents to the website TakeWinterByStorm.org, which offers a lot of good information for what to do before the next power outage or worse natural disaster.

What do you think? What did the city agencies do that worked well for you? What did they need to work on? Tell us in the comments area below.