Just a quick note to inform you of winter control housekeeping activity currently underway with regards to our residential roads.
As a result of the sustained cold temperatures and the intermittent continual snowfall received since our last residential plowout of January 15th, we have found it necessary to provide a “housekeeping type cleanup” of required areas of residential roads which have become congested with the gradual snow accumulation of 8cm.
This activity began yesterday and should be complete later today. This will allow us to be in a better position to receive the additional 4cm of snow being forecast into tonight as well as the anticipated 10 cm that is forecast for this coming weekend. Staff~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Local streets are cleared upon an 8cm accumulation from one “snow event’. This is the Council approved service standard. Implicit in the standard is that a snow packed local street is acceptable. This hopefully explains why streets were not serviced over the past few weeks when we received lesser amounts of snow accumulation.
So what’s changed? Sam has observed the recent mild temperatures are ‘breaking up’ the snow pack that exists, creating a difficult driving environment. I want to emphasize this is a discretionary call, one that he is expected to make on behalf of the department. Rather than call in our contractors, he is making use of City staff and the 13 pieces of equipment at our disposal to undertake some clean up work. This should contain the costs incurred for this activity.
Winter control is not an exact science and does require experienced staff to make judgement calls. This discretionary activity (ie sometimes we do it and sometimes we don’t) does create confusion with the public. Staff