By Jill Sperling

City fields hundreds of snow removal complaints

Jan 17, 2018 | 3:41 PM

KAMLOOPS — Despite an increase in snow removal requests this year, the city’s streets and environmental services manager says the call volumes are not abnormal. 

According to the city, 778 complaints were logged from Oct. 1 to Jan. 15. That’s compared to 492 the previous year. 

However, over the same time period leading into Jan. 2015, the city logged 863 requests for service. 

“That’s all weather dependent, a variety of challenges as the weather changes, as we get large snowfalls,” Glen Farrow said. “We think back to January 4, 2015. That was a huge event for us, and we saw a lot of the calls spike there. So, we can’t really look at what the data is this year as compared to last year. It’s really not that abnormal the call volumes that we’re seeing over the last three months in Kamloops.”

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Farrow says the city is required to follow up on all complaints within 48 hours, whether by phone or in person. 

He says some of the requests are for services that fall outside the responsibility of city streets crews. 

“We’ve clearly indicated for years we do not remove windrows,” Farrow said. “So, when we get those calls we inform the resident that’s the responsibility of the homeowner, removing those windrows. But, an awful lot of the calls are related to cul-de-sacs and windrows. All the work that we do fully aligns with our current service levels that’s been approved by city council.”