Report To Council Lists Snow Clearing Challenges
Prince George, B.C. – A report on the failures of the City’s snow clearing operations during December and January is to be presented to Prince George City Council Monday evening.
When council last met in regular session in January a decision was made to have Superintendent of Operations Bill Gaal conduct an analysis of snow and ice clearing procedures and determine whether changes need to be made. Gaal’s report contains three recommendations to council: approval of a one-time capital expenditure of $6 million to replace 5 graders, 8 sanding trucks with plows, 4 sidewalk plows, 3 front end loaders and one snow blower; approve an increase in the snow levy of $583,000 for additional equipment and labour; and clear the downtown over two nights instead of one.
Gaal’s report says administration brought together a committee representing management, unionized supervisors, operators and union reps who met several times to discuss snow clearing operations during the heavy snow events this winter. The report says the City attempted to mobilize external equipment operators, got access to a grader and operator from the Airport Authority and solicited equipment from neighbouring communities. As well management and CUPE came to an agreement to add an afternoon shift for clearing sidewalks. Those items the report lists as successes.
Listed as Challenges:
– Streets weren’t cleared before each new snow and freeze event and that led to significant rutting on the streets. The build-up of ice slowed subsequent work.
-Communication, both internally and with the public, was inadequate.
-The Operations Department couldn’t gain access to the equipment needed to handle the increased volume of snow.
-Management failed to react to the snow volume and breakdowns of city equipment by leasing additional graders.
-Management approved too much employee time off for both stats and vacations requested before and during the snow events. That, coupled with some overtime refusal, meant a lack of operators and equipment that sat idle at times.
-Management and supervisors didn’t monitor completed routes, resulting in some streets being cleared multiple times and some not at all.
Gaal’s report says the city needs to re-implement the Heavy Snow declaration to tell the public to stay off the roads and tow vehicles so that roads can be cleared; ensure regular communication between Operations, the City Call Centre and the media; install GPS equipment on all snow fleet equipment; increase staff levels and provide training; rent additional graders for this snow season and train staff to run them; look at new methods of contracting additional equipment; replace aging equipment with new machines; add one tandem axle truck to the fleet instead of putting snow ploughs on garbage trucks.
The report says council may wish to consider changing its Snow and Ice Control Procedure practice of clearing the downtown area in one night to two nights, allowing some arterial routes to be cleared the first night of a heavy snow event.
Comments
Wow. Bill Gaal came up with this report? Shows his performance as superintendant of operations was completely lacking. How does anyone justify his position or title? WE are paying him for what?
Hey, a report suggesting the city spend more money. Now that’s refreshing.
/sarcasm.
But they didn’t fail…they got away with it…the end of winter is in sight; the money and effort was saved. They will now just blow a little air in the tires and make promises for next year.
Oh, and this allows ample excuses for pothole season too…the freeze-thaw, aggressive clearance etc. Public service is for the incompetent.
Want to see the snow clearing problem, hand out mirrors to the city manager and to mayor and council.
Through his own admission Gaal and his Management staff have determined they are the problem.
Buying new equipment, and putting more money in the budget is not necessarily the answer,
Lets see how Council handles this. Will the new City Manager give some people their walking papers??? Does she know enough about Municipal Government to see a snow job (pun intended) when one is taking place??
-its good to see they included some operators and union reps on a discussion of problems
– its good to see them finally admit there was overtime refusal, this is / was a HUGE problem compounded on top of other issues(didn’t all the union guys rant that the contract issue did not effect snow removal? Eyeroll)
– there is no way they are replacing 5 graders, 8 trucks, 4 sidewalk plows and 3 loaders for 6 millions so I’m not sure what they mean here?
They need to own less equipement and hire out more. An owner operator will not be taking holidays or playing union negotiating
right after christmas . I ran a loader (966)
for half my life, It makes me sick watching
some of the city operators run the loaders.
Also chain them up for god sake. Afew days ago I watched a city loader time and time again go up to the snowbank and stop, he should have push the snow up to the top of the pile. I also watched a $600,000 grader
try figure out how to work his blade.lol.
Typical bureaucratic answer to everything…spend more money and the problem will be solved. Problem is, it’s the same people wasting the money. We finally got plowed yesterday from the last 2 snowfalls. There are little used side streets up here that get plowed sooner than the actual residential areas. These are the type of incompetent decisions that have to be addressed, not the lack of funding.
One would think that Gaal has smoothed over most of the issues.
Even those that he admits to are enough to determine that we in fact don’t have any kind of effective snow removal policy.
Is Gaal trying to download this issue back on Council and the City Manager, knowing that they cannot in all conscious spend another 6.5 million on snow removal.
Is he looking for a buy out??? Seems like he is not too concerned about the issue.
Pretty scary situation when you consider what we pay these dudes and what we expect in return.
In his previous report he stated that the Citizens of Prince George had high expectations when it came to snow clearing.
Seems we are all wrong, except Gaal. Hmmmm.
So they confidently (!) faced the winter season in full knowledge of the need to replace 5 graders, 8 sanding trucks with plows, 4 sidewalk plows, 3 front end loaders and one snow blower? Presumably these must be run-down, dilapidated and beyond any possibility of repair pieces of junk?
Sorry, that is simply unbelievable! It’s like a captain setting out to sea knowing full well that the old worn out bilge pumps can barely keep up with the big leak in the bottom of the ship!
We need more studies and trips!
Some of the graders I saw working yesterday looked like they were almost new.
Maybe they were contracted??
We need Council to insist on a public inquiry into this issue to determine everything that went wrong, with a view of getting it fixed.
Having the people responsible for the fiasco issue a report probably is not the best way to get to the bottom of the issue.
Herald Moffat used to say, “it will all go away in the spring.”
Cheers
This morning on North Kelly everyone put out thier garbage bins & guess what !st plow truck in 5 days came by knocking some over BEFORE the garbage truck picked up. Now that takes some planning.
^^^at least you have seen a plow in five days! It has been over 2 weeks for my area. 2 garbage days have past and not one piece of equipment. Time to look at changing to Regional District!
Shouldnt there be a committee..
Committees…Green loves them..
what do committees actually do..
They take minutes and waste hours.
Maybe mayor Green could take another junket to China and her favourite twin city and see how they handle snow clearing.
Heck, she touted Surrey as a model to remove crime from PG. Surrey did set a record for murders last year but I guess in her mind murders are not considered a crime.
As for Gaal, does he even know what end of the shovel to hold.
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