A new tool will let Hamilton residents track snow plows and salt trucks during storms

Motorists in Butler County’s largest city soon will have a way to see maps of where the plows and salt trucks have been during a snowstorm so they know what routes to take to their destinations.

With the season’s first winter storm expected today, city employees plan to use that event to make sure the online tool created by city employees operates smoothly before rolling it out to the public for the next storm — as long as the second storm happens at least two weeks after this one, said Brandon Saurber, Hamilton’s director of Strategy and Information, who rolled out the My Hamilton Resident Portal in October.

The city’s Automatic Vehicle Locator technology provides real-time information about the vehicles’ locations,whether the plows are up or down and whether the salt spreaders are operating.

“We’ve been patiently waiting on some snow to see how this works in a live exercise before we release it to the public,” Saurber said.

If a storm comes as predicted today, city staff will review the tool’s performancewith Hamilton’s tech gurus and garage staff to make sure things operate well, he said.

“We’ve done testing on the sensors (on plows and salt spreaders),” he said, “but we want to make sure that in this full deployment that you’ll get in a snow event, that it works as it should.”

The My Hamilton Resident Portal is found at myhamilton.hamilton-oh.gov.

The resident portal lets city residents know about their own properties, their neighborhoods, and construction projects happening in the city. It also lets people who are putting on festivals and other events to post information about them for others to see. The portal also provides information about the city’s sculptures, public murals and locations of parks and trails, playgrounds and splash pads.

City employees built the portal using Esri software.

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