The Seattle City Council has asked to review all the documents The Seattle Times used for its recent report on the city's bungled snowstorm response.

The council is likely to ask the city auditor to do an internal review of the city's response.

Council President Richard Conlin is particularly interested in the Seattle Department of Transportation's management of snow response, and Mayor Greg Nickels' process in gathering the self-evaluation he submitted to the council at the beginning of March.

The council was preparing to accept the Nickels' after-storm report this week, but backed off that plan because of the Times' stories. The Times reported that managers of the city's snowstorm response were inexperienced, that some of the city's snow equipment sat idle at the height of the storm, and that city leaders' neighborhoods were plowed more frequently than some of the city's arterials.

In a post to his blog today, Councilmember Tim Burgess wrote that while he's interested in the operational errors identified by the Times' story, he's more concerned about "strategic shortcomings" revealed by the snowstorms.