Here We Snow Again - The Clean Up Continues
By 250 News
Thursday, January 20, 2011 03:32 PM
Graders at work in the Crescents area of the City
Prince George, B.C.- City Crews are finally getting caught up with the weekend snow dump, and will be on the roads again tonight starting to work on the big dump of snow that blanketed Prince George overnight.
“We have 33 pieces of equipment out today, and 55 tonight” says Mick Jones, the Streets Division Supervisor for the City of Prince George. “We will be working on trying to stay ahead of the garbage pick up, and since tomorrow is yellow zone, I can say most of yellow zone has been done and will be complete tonight, and we are working on the red zone.”
Jones knows people are frustrated, his department has had plenty of calls from people wanting to know why their residential street hasn’t been dealt with. First, there is the priority list for ploughing, that means the arterial, collector roads, hills and bus routes are done first. Downtown is on that list as well in order to ensure there is adequate parking space. These priority streets are classed as “1's and 2's” with residential streets falling in category 3. That means those in a “3” classed area are the last on the list and in the case of the weather from this week, they didn’t get cleared before the second wave of snow hit the City.
Jones admits, some of the complaints are warranted “Most are coming from the red zone garbage collection area because it was their garbage collection day on Monday and with the snowfall that fell on Sunday we were focussed on the priority 1 and 2’s and problem hill areas, so the red zone was basically last on the list so to speak. When we focus on residential, we try to stay ahead of the garbage collection schedule, it makes it easier for the solid waste trucks and it gives the residents an idea of when we’re coming as we hope to get to those residential areas the day before their garbage collection.”
Jones says some people seem to be confused about the snow clearing budget. He says people need to remember there are two parts to an annual snow clearing budget because it follows a calendar year.
The first part is used January to March, the second being used October through December of the same year. Last year, the budget was boosted to $5 million dollars, and combined with a lighter snowfall than usual last December , there is a healthy surplus. Jones says at an estimated cost in excesss of $400 thousand dollars per snow fall to clean up the City, it will only take a couple more storms like this year to put a serious dent in the budget for this year and any surplus. "If the season continues like this, we will definitely be concerned about the second half of the snow season in 2011."
Jones says if the snowfall that hit the City last night, had been delayed just 24 hours, then all the remnants of the last snowfall would have been dealt with before they had to deal with the new storm.
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Posted by: Slim2229 on January 20 2011 3:52 PM