Commercial snow removal in Chatham Township, NJ

Chatham Township's rule covers garden apartment developments, nursing homes, office buildings, shopping centers and other properties the public visits for business, which have six hours of daylight after a snowfall to clear their sidewalks. If it is not done, the township can clear it and unpaid costs are added to the next tax bill. Snow may not be placed on any street, road, sidewalk or municipal right-of-way. Source: Chatham Township Code §19-10.4 to §19-10.6. A commercial snow contract can include walkway clearing and treatment so the deadline is met without anyone on site having to remember it.

Chatham Township has 49 miles of public road in it, of which the town itself is responsible for 38. That is the 20th largest municipal road list of the 39 municipalities in Morris County, against a county median of 37.9. No county route runs through the town, and NJDOT 11 miles of state highway. None of those crews touch private property. A parking lot, its access road and its loading area are the owner's responsibility no matter how well the public roads around them are cleared, which is the reason a commercial property needs its own contract. Road mileage figures are NJDOT's, from its Mileage by Municipality and Jurisdiction report.

At the Morris County station, an average winter brings 8.4 days with an inch or more of snow, 5.3 with two inches or more and 1.1 with six or more, counted across 55 winters. That is the number a seasonal price is built from, because a trigger depth decides how many of those days bring a truck out. The lightest winter on that record had 1 plowable days and the heaviest had 24, which is the swing a seasonal contract exists to absorb.

The long-record station for Morris County averages 18.8 inches a season, and the worst season on that record was 88.5 inches in the 1995-96 winter. The average is the number people budget from and the maximum is the number that decides whether a seasonal contract was worth it. Both come from Boonton (NWS COOP). Two towns in the same county can still differ on the ground, because elevation moves snowfall more than distance does.

Crews are alerted more than an hour before snow is expected to begin, so equipment is moving before the first flake rather than after the phone rings. Salt and machines are staged at locations across Morris County and its neighbors rather than dispatched from a single yard.

A trigger depth agreed in writing before the season, not a judgment call during the storm. Every property gets a written plan covering trigger depths, priority areas and where the piles go, settled before winter, plus a service report after every event.

Yes, and it is how a lot of our work runs. We are a fit for town halls, libraries and public facilities in and around Chatham Township, where the bid is priced to what the specification actually says, and every visit is logged in a form that answers a public records request. Nearby towns we also cover include Madison, Chatham Borough, Harding.