The mayor's reply is exactly that of a middleman. The mayor's job rightfully is not to supply electricity to his voters. Nobody in his city voted him to deal with their snow problem. So when disaster strikes, all he does is to go through the terms of service. It turned out that nobody in his city has the winter protection plan.

I am not exactly sure adding the winter protection plan would make a difference. The mayor will just award it to another business with substandard winter solution. Or just conveniently cut the service in summer. If you put a governing body to oversee the winter issues, the mayor (or his party) will try to cut its funding or put his own people inside. Or get other government bodies to wage war.

Solution? The voters need to have a common source of information. Then the voters will have to educate themselves about the issues facing their city, state or country. See the problem? The voters just outsourced the hard work to pundits and lobbyists.