Recent storms present challenges, fill coffers

Panhandle residents dealt with road and school closures as best they could during the recent blizzards. But how does the weather affect the city as whole after the snowflakes have gone and the winds have died down?

“Storms always cause numerous challenges for the city staff and emergency management personnel, but dealing with the storms is just part of what we do as a city,” said Sidney City Manager Gary Person.

“Each storm brings different types of challenges,” he continued.

“Obviously when the storms hit on weekends or nights, you have overtime issues with personnel, equipment stress and sometimes damages, but public safety and public services is what we’re all about.”

Person said that city staff prepare the budget every year while trying to calculate in “financial unknowns” for the upcoming year.

“People depend on the services in all types of weather and it’s up to us to make sure we are prepared for each approaching storm,” he said. “Being an interstate community with I-80 passing through our city limits and Exit 59 being a popular destination for travelers when storms approach, it takes a significant amount of man-hours dealing with parking of trucks, etc.”

The city offers 550 motel rooms, numerous restaurants and 24-hour services for travelers, allowing a relatively smooth accomodation of stranded drivers. But storms also pose staffing challenges, as road closures prevent employees from reaching work.

Storms and stranded travelers also create some unexpected issues.

Mike Roberts, General Manager of Perkins restaurant, said that the effects of the storm weren’t just about sales being up or down. He said they were about his employees coming together as a team and being open for travelers.

“During the storms we get less local people, unfortunately, and we get more of the people sometimes caught off guard,” said Roberts. “Some are staying in the motel and they don’t have enough money.

“I can tell you this last week I had somebody that was traveling on a budget and had enough for the hotel and couldn’t eat and came over and we helped them out,” he said. “It’s not just how we do and how busy we are or not - it’s kind of what kind of name do we leave for Sidney.”

Roberts said that it’s not about travelers remembering Perkins. Instead, he said that it is about them remembering what kind of a community Sidney is and that they helped them out when they were in trouble.

“I can guarantee you those people left and didn’t talk about Perkins,” he said. “They will say I was at Sidney and went up to Cabela’s and did this and when I didn’t have this, they helped me with that.”

Another aspect of dealing with the storms that Roberts said helped his team stay focused was the appreciation of those they were helping.

“The truckers that were here, that’s their life (dealing with storms) – that’s what they do. They know it and they understand it,” said Roberts.

“What was good to see was the truckers that came in and they understood. Two weeks ago during the first storm a lot of the other businesses besides McDonald’s and us closed at 4 p.m.

“The people that came in, not just the truckers but the guests, they just appreciated us being here,” he said.

Roberts said that the customers recognized the work that restaurant employees did just to stay open.

“They were understanding the we went and got three servers and two cooks with our SUVs just to be open for them,” he said. “It was kind of cool how they understood and appreciated what we were doing and were thankful.”

Roberts said that his business employs people from about 20 to 30 miles out of town and some of them, including him, had to stay in Sidney hotels to make sure they could make it to work the next day.

The restaurant manager also noted that his high school staff members helped out a lot.

“A lot of the schools were canceled so a lot of our high school kids really stepped up,” said Roberts. “We have a good group of high school kids, juniors and seniors, that came in and really helped through the storm.

“The high school kids, the last thing they want to do is work on their day of no school. So we appreciated them doing that and so did the customers,” he said.

Roberts said that after the storm most of the local business picked up again but fewer travelers were seen at the establishment because once I-80 opened back up it seemed everyone was in a hurry to get on the road and finish their journey without stopping in.

“While you might have a captive customer audience when the highways shut down, you also do not have the additional travelers coming in when you have a free flow of traffic, so there’s some give and take,” said Person. “Obviously downtown sees less traffic and sales during the storm patterns.”

Jan Kepler, front office manager of the Best Western Plus Sidney Lodge, said that their business sees a noticeable growth in business in stormy weather.

“It does definitely bring the revenue up,” she said. “They got somewhere to eat here and they need to eat. It probably filled up our motel I would say.

“It’s not so much trucks but other travelers too. We get more as to regular travelers going through that maybe get stuck here more than one night because they are afraid to leave so it ends up being double nights,” said Kepler.

“It certainly beats the days in Sidney prior to 1988 when we had no interstate services or businesses located on Exit 59 and the community had to deal with setting up temporary shelters and accommodations, etc. throughout town - usually at the National Guard Armory or County Fairgrounds,” said Person.

“When the Department of Roads in recent years was trying to figure out the future of its I-80 rest area upgrades, we put together a great ‘Sidney’ plan to even better accommodate trucks and services, moving an expanded state rest area location with full 24-hour amenities to Exit 59,” he continued.

Person said that unfortunately “regional politics” made it so the plan was never carried out to the extent that it should have been, but that citizens and businesses in Sidney still work together to help one another through the storms rather effectively.