Having been in the snow storm that hit back in December (while on my way out of the state, which took six hours) I witnessed people continuing to fly along a totally-snow-covered I-70 at 70mph without blinking. After they spun out and got stuck I’d offer help and they’d shun me for a cell phone. The fact of the matter is that people in this state are just god damn rude and don’t give a royal flying fuck about anyone but themselves. Blizzard? White out? Who cares! I’m walking across the street to the liquor store even though morons going 50 can’t see two feet in front of them.

I live just inside the city limits. I haven’t seen a single plow in two weeks. The main streets in my area have one lane open, and you’re damned lucky if it’s not a two-way lane, because no one’s going to stop and let you through. I happened to drive past a set of police standing around dealing with an accident while, ten feet away, a major intersection had the traffic lights flashing red which, in this state, apparently means “go as fast as you fucking can.” I had to honk my way through it while getting yelled at and flipped off. Apparently anything other than an entirely functional traffic signal means “never stop” in this god-forsaken state. The cops stared at me like I was crazy when I said “hey, why don’t you go direct traffic so you don’t have any more accidents”? The mind boggles.

I’m from a particularly nasty spot of the country in terms of weather. This was a lot of snow, even by St. Louis standards, but in St. Louis this shit would never have accumulated like this. The streets would have been covered in salt before the first flake ever fell, and when it started building up there would have been a plow in every single lane just waiting to go at it. The problem is that Maryland just sat around while it snowed, and then tried to deal with the problem rather than prevent the problem in the first place.

You may not be able to control how much it snows, but you sure as hell can control what happens when it hits the ground.

Yes, the response has been pretty good for a city ill-equipped to deal with it. Yes, it could still be better. But for people who are excoriating the newly-minted Mayor for this, shame on them, because it isn’t exactly all her fault. It’s like people who would say of Obama’s performance on January 21st, 2009: “Why isn’t the economy all better now?” I don’t think I’ve had need of doing my laundry once since she’s been sworn in, so I don’t expect her to swoop in and save the city from a snow-storm with badly-outmatched equipment and personnel. Sure, she needs to get with her planners and say, “hey guys, Pratt Street is a major artery, let’s not clog that up during rush hour. Let’s focus that time on people who still can’t get out of their streets.” But that’s something that may only be obvious in hindsight, at least when there’s a whole city to deal with.

These aren’t excuses, only reasons, but they are still concerns to be addressed. Given the relative rarity of this sort of situation here, I expect it won’t be a frequent issue. But Baltimore would still do well to learn that DPW trucks can’t wait until the streets are invisible beneath a layer of snow, slush, or ice before making their presence known.

On the other hand…this is not new. Even if we work with the understanding that Baltimore is not equipped to deal with the amount of snow it’s received this season (and realistically can’t justify the cost of what it would take to do the job well), our city government has a history of doing an awful job of handling the task. Even as recently as Saturday, January 23rd, when Baltimore received its second big snowstorm of the season, DPW trucks were nowhere to be seen until the storm has already paralyzed the city…and even then, they were too few and doing too little.

Now, here’s what’s different about the storms we got over the past week: The city tried a lot harder, and things were handled a little better. Did they do a good job? NO. Is there room for improvement? YES. But was there improvement? YES.

By no means do I think newly-sworn-in Stephanie Rawlings-Blake deserves a trophy and a trip to Disneyland for a job well done, but her administration sure as heck handled it better than any similar circumstance under her predecessor, Sheila Dixon. Confusingly, though, I’ve heard more anger over this storm than over any storm we had under Dixon. Seriously, did people forget how bad things have always been? Did they expect a perfect performance from a city government who’s only change was a rookie mayor who was sworn in barely 24 hours before her first major snowstorm?

People need to understand that governmental change is slow and gradual. It will probably be years before this city learns the best way to handle a crisis like this one. In the meantime, the best thing to do is to exercise some patience and stay on our leaders to continue the improvement they’ve only just begun to affect. People who are exhibiting nchecked, near-riotous anger–which I have seen from more than a few people–are only encouraging leaders to tune them out, not hear their voices.