Local officials unveiled a new text-message system called Alert Madison Tuesday in an effort to better notify city residents of snow emergencies in preparation for the upcoming winter season.
Streets Division spokesperson George Dreckmann said the city began working on the system after record-setting snowfall last winter resulted in eight snow emergency declarations, poor compliance with parking rules and expensive snow removal.
Dreckmann said the city already uses e-mails and phone messages to get the word out about snow emergencies, but the city hopes the new text message system will help notify younger residents, particularly the student population, of parking rules during winter weather.
Dreckmann said notification is even more important since the Common Council voted this week to raise parking fine violations during snow emergencies from $30 in the downtown area and $20 throughout the rest of the city to $60 citywide.
It's a 60-buck hit and that I think is the kind of thing that we're hoping will get people's attention and steer them to sign up for these other types of notifications,"" Dreckmann said.
For more information or to sign up for snow emergency text messages, go to www.cityofmadison.com/winter.
