BEATRICE – Gage County officials praised local township government for their performance in recent winter storms, with grader operators facing blinding and sometimes dangerous conditions.


The comments came during an annual Township Association meeting Thursday night, at the Veterans Club in Beatrice.
"I'm sure you had lots of people encouraging you along the way...(laughter)...people calling you and telling you what a great job you were doing. In all seriousness, we've had people who were a little more loud in encouraging, but there are people who say thank you."


Back-to-back major snowfalls in early January clogged area rural roads, sometimes blowing shut areas that had just been cleared. One township official recalls being chewed out by parents of a teenager, worried about getting to Snowball…an annual prom-like event. That, while public safety officials were warning people to stay home if travel wasn’t necessary.


Gage County Board Chairman Erich Tiemann says township officials face a different scenario today.  "You've gotta remember there are a lot of folks who have moved outside of city limits. They are used to different circumstances that you faced once you get winds and open beanfields...trees on the south side of the road, trees on the north side of the road. It's a different circumstance. That's something we're going to have more of, every year. That's good for out tax base, it's good keeping people here in the community and it gives additional challenges to you guys. There's that many more blades on the roads. You talk to some of these counties with commissioners, and you've got the county, alone. The county tries their best, but you guys are right around the corner from them. Unfortunately, you're right around the corner and they know exactly where you're at. But at the same time, you know where the bridge is at the bottom of the hill and you know where the road is going to get sticky and dangerous."


The county did get the assistance of Nebraska DOT crews in clearing about 34 miles of road in the county, on order of the Governor’s office. Tiemann said it’s all about working together between jurisdictions.


"As you guys run into issues on these snows....we're going to have another one, hopefully not a blowing snow like this one, for a while again. If we can help at the county level, we sure will. We've got to get our stuff open and we struggle like everyone else...but as soon as we got done, we tried to go out and hit some of the other roads. If you've got somewhere that's really sticky, lets us know and we'll see if we can get to that."


State Senator Myron Dorn, of Adams thanked township officials for dealing with the bad snowstorms.  "When you sit up there and hear other reports of how other areas of the state did...we had some tremendous help, some tremendous grader work. I know we had some issues, but I really thank you for what you did in keeping the roads open, and getting us all through that."  Dorn pointed out Gage County certainly wasn’t alone in battling bad conditions.


"Part of the issue with all that snow was...and maybe why you didn't see as many down here, is north central Nebraska...you thought we had four or five foot drifts....they had eight, ten or twelve foot drifts up there. Some of the main highways they didn't get open until Monday afternoon, and the snow started on Thursday."


In some cases, township grader operators helped out neighboring townships when needed. Gage County has 157 miles of paved road to go along with county and township gravel surfaces.


Representatives from 22 of the county’s 24 townships attended the annual association meeting, Thursday night.