Snow Clearing Budget On Hold
By 250 News
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 05:39 PM
Prince George, B.C.- The snow clearing budget for the City of Prince George has been referred to the Finance and Audit Committee for further examination.
At issue, the fact the snow clearing budget has fallen short in 4 of the last five years.
· 2004 over budget by $500,000
· 2005 under budget by $805 thousand
· 2006 Over budget by $1.1 million
· 2007 over budget by $400 thousand
· 2008 over budget by $1.4 million
The budget over runs are covered by surpluses in other budgets.
Although staff are requesting an increase of 3.4% to $4.253 million, Council wants to get a handle on what the budget should be, because clearly it is either being underfunded, or there needs to be a change in the level of service.
Development Services General Manager Bob Radloff says snow trends show minimum temperatures have risen about 4-5 degrees in the last 50 years. There has been little change in the number of snow “events” but the events are more severe. “The winter cycles are different, we get more freeze-thaw conditions just like Ottawa which didn’t have that sort of thing happening 20 years ago. It effects our ice control measures and our pot hole repair work”’
Councillor Bassermann says the public needs to understand the weather is changing, “It’s not a change in service, rather a change in circumstances.”
Radloff says the level of service has been increased over the years because the public requested things like:
· Ploughing out driveways and
· Hauling snow from boulevards rather than piling snow on boulevards.
Councillor Cameron Stolz wanted to know if there were some additional snow dump sites if that would reduce the number of trucks hired to haul the snow to other sites.
Development Services General Manager, Bob Radloff says the sites for dumps were moved away from riparian habitats so the melting wouldn’t have any impact on rivers or streams. While it is more expensive in that it requires more trucks, the result is there is no damage to rivers and streams.
It was explained to Council that the snow removal crews are called out when there are 3 inches of snow on the main arterial roads, and 4 inches on residential side streets. Staff say the entire city can be cleared in 6 days.
During the major snowfall in December, there were 6 graders, 9 loaders and upwards of 20 trucks added to the equipment already in the City’s fleet. Yes there have been problems with sidewalk clearing as one of the machines burned out, and another of the three machines blew a motor.
Councillor Stolz also asked about the level of service for clearing parking lots, noting that since the parking lot clearing is contracted out, it is entirely possible that City streets could be a mess but parking lots clean. Stolz wanted to know how much could be saved if the facilities became responsible for clearing their own parking lots and those dollars shifted to streets. City staff say the saving would be only $170 thousand dollars.
Councillor Brian Skakun called for the public to take it easy on City Staff, “People are calling the call centre here and beating up the staff, well they are just passing along the message. So if you have a snow bank in front of your home and need it removed, call me, there’s no point in yelling at the call centre people.”
Residential streets take up half the budget and Councillor Shari Green wanted to know if there was a possibility of not clearing residential streets at all, or perhaps increasing the depth of snow on residential streets before snow clearing moves into residential areas. Right now, snow removal crews move into the residential areas when 4 inches of snow have accumulated.
Councillor Dave Wilbur says perhaps the City should keep the public informed about the cost of snow removal so taxpayers can see just how much the work costs. Right now, an 8 inch snowfall costs about $400 thousand dollars.
Mayor Dan Rogers says the crux of this is , we have a problem “We have either a financial problem or a service problem but based on those trends, if you go over those past few years, it’s about half a million dollars . The costs we are budgeting are not meeting the service standards we have outlined in our policy. We have two choices, we change the service levels or we fix the financial matter.”
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Posted by: dirtcheap on February 11 2009 6:43 PM