Sounds like Mr Gaal is a scapegoat in this affair. The mayor and council work for the taxpayers of this city. I want to know if my family was place at risk as a labour negotiation ploy by this council during early January? I, with probably many other taxpayers in this city, have a bill with a body shop in town because of this council’s decision. This is total unacceptableor maybe even criminal in my eyes. I have one message for the mayor and council, RESIGN and go back to the poll to be judged!

Councillor Brian Skakun wondered why it took outrage from city residents for staff to offer up this ‘fix’. “It took the community to force the City to say that it failed in its snow removal and that there’s work that needs to be done.

If the residents can cause this much fuss over snow, maybe we could cause this much fuss and get that mayor outta there before November!!

There was a possible strike on the horizon, so don’t send the snow removal crews out on Jan 4-5.. I don’t understand. Was this a ploy to save money or to make the workers look bad. At any rate, we are still dealing with the ice on the roads from last December. Was the city trying to get through December without spending any money ? What ever the reason, it failed and 2 months later we are still dealing with the ice.

Gaal didn’t have the correct answers and Green smiles at him like he is a new born puppy. Sad.

I think the City should have enough equipment and operators on staff to handle a base amount of snow. We should not have tons of extra staff and equipment on standby year round for ‘exceptional’ events. ‘Exceptional’ events should be handled by contract to the private sector.

Acme, Klein and others have loads of equipment and staff. After the first two days they are all caught up. The City should take advantage of this because it is a lot cheaper to do this than to keep loads of equipment and staff on standby year round for these ‘exceptional’ events.

Icicle: That’s true, however the city has to completely rethink the way it deals with contractors. They have to pay them more, not hold them to ransom to an exclusive contract and call them before a big forecasted snowfall, not after they find that they can’t keep up. The contractors have work they are already committed to and they do it very well.

I called both Acme and Klein a few weeks ago. Neither of them has ever had a call from the City, but both are ready and willing to help.

I think this option should be explored before we spend $6.6 million to help Gaal save face…

Staff and mayor were playing games, Goal said as much. No reason for not sending out snow equipment for those two days and that’s just what we know happened.. what other crap did they pull of?

A little blame on us residence as well. Guess what folks. Buy real winter tires not all seasons. Smart cars and small compacts are not made for our area. Keep those two things in mind and you won’t have a problem 99% of the time with snow.

largest snow budget in years yet the worst service in years. please explain mrs green

What happens to the garbage trucks which are taken out of service after seven years?

Are they scrapped or are they sold to a company which refurbishes them to be put back into service somewhere else?

Surely these machines should last a lot longer than seven years if they are serviced regularly and properly maintained!

PG, look at our Navy’s aging “Sea King” helicopters, 50 years old and counting. :-)

Our garbage trucks were nearing 7 years old. Bill Gaal states that “The immediate emergency was our garbage fleet”. Total incompetence if over 7 years our City Managers allowed the garbage trucks to suddenly reach the emergency replacement situation! My God- can’t this City get its finances and organization under control?!

Is Bill Gaal the right man to manage this department, especially at $170 000 a year??

“A little blame on us residence as well. Guess what folks. Buy real winter tires not all seasons. Smart cars and small compacts are not made for our area. Keep those two things in mind and you won’t have a problem 99% of the time with snow.” .. what has this got to do with an incompetent snow removal system? If you don’t have proper snow tires you are somehow responsible for the state of the roads? They aren’t suppose to plow the roads and keep them in shape because people don’t have good tires, they are supposed to do their job because we pay them to.

Put a plow on the front of the garbage trucks and they can truly have the garbage routes done before garbage is picked up, as is supposed to be the standard, which it never is.

Free Enterprise has a good point. Prince George is a winter city, we have snow and lots of it most of the time and lots of cold weather. All season tires especially when they get some miles on them are not good winter tires, they should actually be banned from city roads during the winter months. Choose a good all round vehicle for living in Prince George, they make some good economical well price all wheel drives today. Most small cars are too light for Prince George during the winter. Don’t rely on the city or Mayor Green to take care of you, because they have proved they won’t or can’t; good vehicle, good tires and drive according to the road conditions people, you should fair well most of the time…welcome to the wild wild central interior, where the taxes are high and the service is low. :(

Do you want to bet there will be non stop snow control during the winter games? The quality of which none of us will have ever seen in PG.

As far as all season tires being banned…Thats ridiculous. Myself along with thousands of others have driven on all seasons for years including multiple thousands of hwy miles without incident.
It isn’t the tires that are the problem.

The real source of the problem is clear: city employees. The union used snow clearing as leverage to try and strong arm the City to a pay raise. I have driven through many small communities this winter with comparable snow conditions and their roads and side roads were clear, notwithstanding they have a FRACTION of the Prince George’s budget for snow removal. Our immediate neighbours in the Regional District also have remarkably cleared roads which stand in stark contast to our own disastrous roads. The difference? The Regional District uses contractors. Forget about spending $6 million on equipment. Contract out snow clearing to proper contractors who will show up, work late hours when the snow flies, and will structure their holidays so that they are available to work during the winter season when it tends to snow more (you would think that is obvious). I would urge council to contact neighbouring municipalities to do a qualitative comparison between how their contracted snow removal services compare to Prince George’s employee run (non) service.

I live in a very high-tax neighbourhood, and I only see a plow once every two weeks or so. If they try and raise my taxes again to buy newer equipment that will sit idle in the yards, I will petition with my neighbours to join the Regional District. We get no water, no sewer and no snow removal. I am not exactly sure what my $5000 a year is paying for.

Cheetos what about snow tires with a few miles on them? I have never had a problem with all season tires since they came out. The little go carts a lot of people buy these days just don’t cut it for this area.

I drive a small car and have no issues getting around. Don’t try and tell me I have to pay higher taxes year after year and now I have to have a big gas guzzler in order to navigate the crappy roads in this town. That’s total BS. Yes, winter tires are a must. The only time I’ve had an issue is with the December snowfall and even then I made sure I had a shovel in my trunk and was ready to dig myself out.

The fiasco in December was poorly managed, simple as that. Why on earth multiple staff would have approved holiday time is beyond me. Poor management decision. Trying to lay blame on pending job action is also a joke. Job action was not in place at the time, and management made a judgment call not to offer OT. Or perhaps they did and it was turned down? The fact that Mr. Gaal states it is “difficult for him to expand on that” tells me that there is more to this than simply looming job action.

Furthermore, the story keeps changing. First we hear every piece of equipment is running 24/7 and every staff member is out working around the clock. Then we find out much of the equipment is sitting in a lot, not being used. The answer to that is that one staff member had a death in the family. Now we hear that equipment was failing and now we need new equipment? And now we also hear that there were multiple staff members on holidays? Why does the story keep on changing? What is the true story? Who is responsible for this mess and what actually went wrong? And if this latest spin is indeed the true story, then we were being fed a pile of BS up until now! I don’t trust ANY of them.

I’m not even overly angry about what happened in December. We got a bunch of snow and it wasn’t removed in a timely manner. Whatever. Learn from it and do it better next time. What makes me angry is the constant changing story being told as to the “why” it happened and the failure of anyone to take any ounce of responsibility!

Bill gall has purposely held back the crews from working. He also has limited the overtime, this is a big problem. When will council see through this smoke

If the city would fix the pot holes garbage trucks wouldnt be beaten into the ground in seven short years. I know the toll that the city streets caused to my personal vehicle it became a rattle trap in less than five years, with less than 50,000 km.
The city buses will be next. Oh and the electric smart car does it need replacing also?

Well Seamut since you asked. I’ve been driving snowy Prince George roads for over 40 years. I’ve driven, rear wheel drive, front wheel drive, all wheel drive and four wheel drive. I started with winter bias ply tires, moved on to all season tires, studded winter tires, ice radials. I personally drive a small 4×4 truck and I recently switched over from all season M&S tires to Goodyear Winter Slalom Tires, I can’t believe the difference, it’s a different truck. The winter I had the all seasons I was in four wheel drive just about all season. With my dedicated winter tires, I only need four wheel drive occasionally, came handy during “snowplow gate” – All seasons work, that’s true, but the rubber on them is still too hard and when the cold weather rolls around, they just get harder and less effective on ice. When you drive all season tires all year they grow less effective, in reality giving the driver a false sense of security, something like our current Mayor Green :(

Maybe the city could tell us how the Nissan Ice, oops sorry, Nissan Leaf navigates the roads.

Bill Gaal is a prime example of the Peter principle. He has gone far and beyond his level of incompetency. Quite the story teller.

I’m afraid the face of the Nissan Leaf has turned fall red and got parked for the winter. ;)

Big shock. Lots of buck passing with no real solutions.

Same applies to winter tires about wear unless you get the better ones.

That’s true seamut, winter tires eventually age, even if not used. The rubber hardens up and even though there may be a lot of traction on them still, they are just useless. Happened to me once, I bought a pair of used winter tires which were stored under a sundeck for about four years, used only one season, lots of traction on them, but they were terrible, the rubber had hardened in the sun and they didn’t flex like it was suppose to, I eventually had to buy new tires….well live and learn I guess.

The union used snow clearing as leverage in their last negotiation, this is now common knowledge.

Machines sat idle. Listening to Brian Skakun on the CBC this morning, there were all kinds of interesting accounts… one of them was a grader that sat idle while its regular operator was on disability, he didn’t say for how long.

This is the kind of efficiency and service the City provides.

It’s absolutely and patently absurd to suggest that small compact cars should not be acceptable for Prince George in the winter.

The people that say that seriously need to travel to areas that get similar or worse winters than PG and see what they drive. Here’s a hint, many of them drive small compact cars and have no issues whatsoever getting around.

Good grief folks, get out of the bubble. LOL.

Some compact cars are okay, the sub compact ones are actually pretty useless. I had an early ninty Toyota Celica (compact), which I sold just recently, it was amazingly good in snow, I could push snow around with my bumper. But newer ones (They don’t make Celicas any more)but similar in size, people are having trouble account they are too light and get high centred easier. Once they get high centred it doesn’t matter what you have for winter tires, you will get stuck. Compact and sub compact (new cars these days) are too light. Mid size cars such as a Subaru Impreza, or a Ford Fusion with all wheel drive, you will not have any problems. Sorry to disagree with you NMG

Bill makes $170,000 a year? Wow! Nice work if you can get it. I’m always told that there are one and a half million people unemployed in Canada. And we have a shortage of staff to remove snow? Gimme a break, eh?

Maybe a rebate payable to the city from the auto manufacturers for being the first city in North America to make 4 WD vehicles and snow tires mandatory from October to April.

“As far as all season tires being banned…Thats ridiculous. Myself along with thousands of others have driven on all seasons for years including multiple thousands of hwy miles without incident.
It isn’t the tires that are the problem.”

I used to feel the same Dragonmaster until I bought some winter tires for my kid. I could not believe the different the winter tires made to the overall control of the car. I now run winter tires myself they do make a difference and should be mandatory!

It does not matter what kind of tires one has when one id faced with driving on solid ice/snow roads with ruts, dips, bumps that have elevation differences of more than 10cm within a distance of a metre long straight edge because neither plow or a grader has been around for more than 2 to 3 weeks on a city subdivision in the bowl. Even low speeds such as 10kph will give one a bone jarring and parts loosening ride.

From snow/ice bumps to potholes for 5 to 6 months of the year in a city is the height of ignorance on the part of City Management. All those who have any complicity in this need to be fired, but they are not. I want to know why not!!

“The union used snow clearing as leverage in their last negotiation, this is now common knowledge”
————————

They didn’t work overtime, so whats the problem JB?

Small cars are fine NMG if the snow clearing is done properly.

I run snows on my vehicles too NoWay. I’m just saying that all seasons are just fine as well.

Many would say they have free reign to do what they want because they were elected Gus.

I agree, Dragonmaster, that there are many that would and do say that. It is that mindset that screws us up, especially if those we elected share that mindset. I suspect our Mayor is one who does, as is Mr. Stolz.

Those who have freer rein to say that would be those who actually run the City, the Administration. It is their job. They get hired to do that job and they get promoted if they do it well, and they stay stuck if they do not and may even get fired if they do not perform as expected.

City Council sets direction. They manage nothing and they operate nothing. They just have to manage to get into their seats and operate the microphone in front of them and move their lips and we all hope that they are connected to some reasonable brain cells. Other than that, they just need to make sure they have cleared their ears of wax so that they can listen to what people are saying about the direction they wish this city to go.

City Council has a duty to listen to the population, they have a duty to ensure that the Administration runs the City effectively and efficiently so that we get the best quality services for the least money.

The BC Community Charter puts it this way:

The purposes of a municipality include

(a) providing for good government of its community,

(b) providing for services, laws and other matters for community benefit,

(c) providing for stewardship of the public assets of its community, and

(d) fostering the economic, social and environmental well-being of its community.

So, the question is how does one monitor that we have all those things in place? For instance, we are finding every year now for several years that we are doing very poorly on (c) as well as others. But the fact that the governments we have been electing and the administration those governments have been putting in place have not being providing the stewardship of the assets of the community.

As Councillor Hall so nicely put it when the revelation was made about snow equipment, how many other situations like that do we have. To me, there is a sense that some Councillors are losing faith in their Administrators. Beth James is bearing the brunt of that now and she is not being as honest as I think she ought to be. The organization she has inherited is in a mess, but she cannot sweep house since the house has to keep operating as best as it can while it is reorganized.

So no, there is no free rein if we monitor those we have elected on an ongoing basis. If we do not, we are derelict in our duties as citizens of this community.

Speaking of that, I wonder when the Haldi Rd. case will come to trial.

I am assuming that they are looking at alternate opportunities by now. As they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

BTW, if they had worked with the City to find a more appropriate location for such a facility as has been done in all those other communities that have such facilities, the facility would likely be operating by now.

Dragon: “They didn’t work overtime, so whats the problem JB? “

Not really. Skakun said on the CBC this morning they shut down snow removal operations _completely_ the weekend of Jan. 4th and 5th when a big snowfall occurred. Hmm… when else did they shut things down to grease the wheels of negotiation?