Mr. Answer Person is asked if grass will grow next to the city streets

Jan asks Mr. Answer Person: "While most of the grass has turned green, a lot of that right along the street has stayed tan.  From the chemicals put on the street to melt the snow/ice?  What is the best way to replace this grass before the dandelions grow there?"

Mr. Answer Person says: I have learned in several years of answering questions that sometimes a question is more of a comment than a question!  Let me tackle the comment first: You might remember that the past winter was what Decorah Street Commissioner Dave Tollefson, using remarkable understatement, called "a bad winter."  Because of that, city road crews had to use around 1,500 tons of sand and 400 tons of salt on city streets.  Note that the sand used was almost four times the amount of salt used.

So Mr. Answer Person looks on a little "tan grass" as the price we had to pay for not getting into accidents over the winter.
 
As for the best treatment of grass along the street—it's raking out the sand that might still be there.  You'd be surprised how the grass will recover when spring weather comes….IF the spring weather comes!