The ghost of the nearly record-breaking snowfalls of 2022-2023 haunted St. Paul’s snow emergency this week, forcing the city’s Public Works to pair civilian ticket issuers with police parking enforcement officers to issue printed instead of handwritten tickets to vehicles parked in plow areas.
In a purely administrative decision, “Ramsey County District Court ruled … that as of May 1, 2025, we couldn’t issue handwritten tickets,” explained St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw, in an interview Friday. “It was overwhelming the court system. In the winter of ’22 and ’23, we issued over 20,000 written tickets. Most of those were tickets for snow.”
The written tickets require additional data entry processing and generally take more time, he said.
With parking enforcement officers working the printers from their squad cars, civilians hired by Public Works served as runners this week, scouring streets to issue some 3,253 tickets from Sunday through Wednesday. Those tickets resulted in 952 tows, hitting the department’s goal of maintaining a clearance rate of about 30%.
“We were really efficient,” Kershaw said. “It’s at least as much as, or more than, some of our other snow emergencies.”
The snow emergency that was declared last Sunday officially ended at 9 p.m. Thursday, but snowing continued Friday morning, and could resume Saturday evening with another inch or so of precipitation. There also may be more snow next week.
“This week has been a good example of why we need a new model,” said Kershaw, who began experimenting last winter with alternating even/odd-side parking in two pilot areas in Highland Park and Payne-Phalen. “When we have successive little snows, it’s hard to go back and plow residential streets because they’re all parked up. You’ve got cars on both sides.”
“With this alternate side parking, we can go back and clean them up without calling a snow emergency,” he said.
Snelling-University, Selby-Western even/odd parking
To test the concept in more densely-populated areas, Public Works will enforce temporary even/odd parking in two new pilot areas as of Jan. 1, and they’re both “areas that are a little more difficult,” Kershaw said.
Near the intersection of Snelling and University avenues, even/odd parking will take effect west of Snelling and north and south of University, within the area bounded by Thomas Avenue, Snelling Avenue, St. Anthony Avenue/Interstate 94 and Aldine Street. In the southwest quadrant of the intersection of Selby and Western avenues, even/odd parking will take effect in the area bounded by Selby, Western, Summit Avenue and Dale Street.
On-street parking in the designated areas will be limited to one side of the street, alternating weekly between the even and odd-numbered addresses. Signage will be posted, and maps of the two areas are online at StPaul.gov/NewSnow.
Salting streets
St. Paul Public Works typically reserves salt or brine for major arterial streets, bridges and other high-traffic areas, rather than residential side streets, but sunny days followed by frigid overnight temperatures inspired a change of plan. In light of ice build-up and compacted snows during the freeze-thaw cycle, the department began salting residential streets, as well, and was still cleaning up where it could on Friday on both residentials and arterial thoroughfares.
Where to call if your street wasn’t plowed
Kershaw said he was confident plows had worked their way through every street in the city, but if your street isn’t fully plowed, call 651-266-9700 to have plows do another pass. Major ticketing and towing wrapped up Monday night, but the department has gone back to tag abandoned vehicles.
Delayed text alerts
On Sunday, before ticketing and towing commenced, some of the city’s alert systems kicked in a few hours later than usual.
St. Paul Public Works informs residents that a snow emergency is in effect through a variety of platforms, from social media blasts on sites such as X, previously known as Twitter, to emails and text alerts in multiple languages, an online parking map, a recorded line, local news media and, new in recent months, outgoing voice messages. Not all of those systems rolled out without a kink on Sunday.
A problem with a third-party vendor slowed text alerts for hours, sending out 66,000 text messages on a staggered basis.
“Some went out right away, some trickled out,” said Lisa Hiebert, a spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works, earlier this week.
The snow emergency was declared at about 12:30 p.m. and some 64,000 emails launched soon after, but by 2 p.m. only about half of the text alerts had been distributed. Still, “all the text messages went out by 6 p.m.,” Hiebert said, giving recipients several hours to move their cars.
Another issue — tied to the cyber-security incident that crippled city systems for weeks this summer — left Public Works scrambling to change the message on a recorded line — 651-266-PLOW — that residents can call for updated snow emergency information. That message was not changed until 6 p.m. Sunday, despite the best efforts of communications staff, Hiebert said.
“We had a little glitch with the voicemail message and being able to access that,” she said.
New and existing platforms
The city added a new phone service about a year ago that sends recorded snow emergency messages to 150,000 phone numbers culled from public records. The Everbridge Resident Connect service sends the voice recordings to landlines and mobile numbers using “open sources” registered in St. Paul, Hiebert said. Everbridge is distinct from the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) used by FEMA.
“It’s just one of many, many ways people can get the status update,” Hiebert said. “Signing up for email and text alerts is the best, but residents can also check out the snow emergency parking map, check our socials.” More information is online at StPaul.gov/snow.
How to report vehicles blocking plows
During a snow emergency, residents concerned about an abandoned vehicle blocking snowplow access can call Ramsey County’s non-emergency dispatch number — 651-291-1111 — or fill out an online form at StPaul.gov/SnowTicketing.
Minneapolis also declared a snow emergency on Sunday, after a winter storm that began the previous Friday finished dropping about 5 inches of snow throughout the Twin Cities.
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Hiebert’s advice to new residents?
“If you’re going out of town and you park on the street, make sure you always leave your keys with someone trusted, because we do ticket and tow,” she said.
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