Portland icestorm

Every 5-10 years, Portland receives an ice storm. Though visually not quite as impressive as two feet of snow, these storms do put the city out of commission for a few days. There's really not much we can do about it. Even if we had a fleet of trucks like Boston, a quarter of an inch of ice is tough to deal with. It'd be foolish to waste money attempting to keep the city open when our location between the west hills and the Columbia Gorge occasionally brings us nasty ice storms. Some in the media seemed to portray our lack of salting streets as an environmental decision (we keep our trees green by not salting). That's probably only a small part of the calculation. Salting at every opportunity would rust our cars earlier, a hidden "fee" the "taxpayer" would have to pick up eventually; and tear up the roads from frequent freeze-thaw cycles, though given that we allow people to drive with studs that may not be much of a concern anyway.
That my opinion. Here's Emma's.
And here's a slideshow from Justin.