Hawthorne Art

 Hawthorne Art has closed its gallery and event space though the buiness will be active online.  Appears not enough demand for  an additional event venue in Carbondale

Front Porches

 One of the things the snow showed was how little use a lot of front doors get.  I saw houses a week after the snow still with front steps and sidewalks unshoveled and, in many of those cases, not even footprints coming out and going down the steps. It just shows how much of our lives come out of the back door and head for the car.

Sidewalks

 Still noticing a whole lot of sidewalks uncleared over a week after the snow. At this rate, they will all be melted clear before anyone gets out to shovel them.

Sales Taxes

 A  lot of communities in Illinois increased their sales taxes at the start of the year. happily Carbondale was not among them. Unhappily, Carbondale's rate of 9.75% is still higher than all of the communities on the list save 3, at least by my count.

Snow

 Kudos to the city for getting the streets cleared.  I heard from several people that even the side streets, which have been bypassed during the past few snows, got cleared.  Even the alley running paralel  to North Oakland, which has never been plowed in the 20 yars I have lived there, got plowed this time. 

Sidewalks

 

I see the city expects sidewalks cleared by the end of tomorow. I have seen street adjacent sidewalks with 2 feet of snow piled on top of them from the plows. This in addition to the 6 to 9 inches of snow that fell last weekend. Even the city sidewalk on the east side of the civic center parking lot has not been cleared yet. Couple that with a week's worth of below zero temperatures adn it is no wonder most sidewalks have not been cleared. Hope city government sends out another notice giving people another week until the weather has warmed a bit and the heaviest snowfall in 25 years has a chance to melt.

Plowed Streets Map

 Councilperson Roberts put together this map showing which streets in Carbondale have and have not been plowed. I think the city and state did a pretty good job of getting streets and downtown city sidewalks cleared in a timely manner, especially given this was the worst snowfall the city has seen since 1999. Official reports put the accumulation in Carbondale at 9 inches.