LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Lexington mayor's office announced an overhaul of the city's snow and ice plan that it called the "biggest overhaul in 30 years". The 44-page plan covers treatment methods, communications, equipment, supplies, outside partners and street priority rankings, and it is being presented to the public and to the Urban County Council's Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee on Oct. 13, according to a city release.

Charles Martin, interim commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works, said the work took about seven months and drew on input from salt truck drivers, first responders, schools, residents and council members. He said the city is ready to test the plan and look for ways to refine it. The plan's major changes, as the release lists them, include salting all ranked streets within four hours of a storm's start, adding drivers to the response team, and creating a new public weather dashboard that will show response data.

Other changes would merge Rank 3 and Rank 4 streets into a single category, shift major arterials such as Man O'War, Alumni, Polo Club and Clays Mill to contractors so city crews can focus on lower-ranked roads, and add supervisory staff to inspect routes. The city also said it has agreements with eight disaster response contractors, and it plans a stronger incident command structure based on the recommendations of the city's After Action Review, which identified six key problems, including an unclear operational strategy and inconsistent communication.

The overhaul follows heavy criticism of the city's response to a winter storm in late January and February that forced Fayette County Public Schools students to stay home for eleven days. Mayor Linda Gorton later scrapped the old snow plan, and Nancy Albright, then commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works, resigned, according to WKYT. In April, Gorton said the needed changes would cost around $4 million.

A key element still depends on coordination with the school district. WUKY reported that updated school bus routes add more than 350 lane miles to the streets the city would need to clear, which the city's presentation calls unmanageable with existing resources. The district is working on an alternative plan, the report said.

Martin described the document as a living plan that will change as it is tested and as weather patterns shift. "The last two years have been well outside historical norms," he said in the release, adding that the plan must allow for adaptation.