PARIS – People want to know why their mailboxes are sometimes plowed down by the town’s snowplows.

“That’s the No. 1 question,” said Highway Foreman Frank Danforth, that he receives each year after a snowstorm.

The answer could be any number of reasons, he said.

It’s in the town’s right of way, it’s too low, the pole snapped off, an oncoming car forced the snow plow too far over and off went the mailbox.

“Put it up on chains,” Danforth said, advising how to place a rural mailbox in Maine.

Danforth, who has been highway foreman for the past 11 years and worked for another 10 years with the Highway Department in the 1970s, gave his annual report to selectmen on Monday night about snowplowing procedures.

“The questions are almost the same thing every year,” he said of the dozen or so queries he routinely gets about snowplowing, topped by the one about the mailboxes.

Danforth said the town has 70 miles of roads to plow and most have to be plowed back and forth, which doubles the mileage of any one road. There are five snowplows and five plow routes and each route can take three and one-half to four hours to complete.

Residents also ask him why snow is left on the sidewalks. “We don’t have shifts,” he explained of the procedures large cities use when they have several shifts of workers available to plow round the clock. “We plow to the end. We work as long as we can.”

When snow is left on the sidewalks it is picked up overnight between 11 p.m. and 10 a.m. usually after Paris crew have worked 25 to 30 hours in a major storm and have only rested for a few hours.

Why are the roads so slushy? Because salt is hard to get with the price doubling, he said.

What if a resident’s lawn is damaged during snowplowing? “We’ll come back and fix it in the spring,” Danforth said.

Besides questions that sometimes elicited chuckles from people in the meeting room, Danforth said snowplowing can be a deadly serious venture and warned motorists not to follow a snowplow too closely, particularly when it’s climbing a hill.

“It’s very dangerous. If the truck strikes something it stops suddenly,” he said. Additionally it may spray salt and sand suddenly to get the truck up the hill and at times, the truck is unable to climb a hill. When that happens, the driver must quickly put it in reverse and back up to save it from sliding. That places any motorists directly behind it in jeopardy.

Danforth also had a request for residents. “Don’t plow the snow from your driveway into the streets or culverts,” he pleaded. Not only does it cause problems for snowplows but it can cause a dangerous situation for drivers when the piles of snow from driveways freeze and produce an obstacle course for motorists. Culverts can be damaged by snow, he said.

“The best thing you can do is get what you need before the storm and stay home,” he said.

If people have any questions or problems they should call Danforth at the Highway Department garage at 743-2547 or town office at 743-2501.

Meanwhile, Danforth said he will file his questions and answers for next year’s annual report with selectmen.

“Nothing ever changes,” he said.