By Chad Klassen

Councillor Cavers to put forward notice of motion over snow removal

Jan 8, 2018 | 4:12 PM

KAMLOOPS — After what seemed like weeks of snowfall and frigid temperatures, the weather has warmed up and the snow is starting to recede.

But city councillor Donovan Cavers wants to staff to look at what could’ve been done better during the holidays.

“Basically I just want to look at cities that are similar to ours, as close as they can be by population, by location like weather and size, and see if there’s anything we could do differently, if the resources we’re putting into snow clearing budget right now are still meeting the needs of the city,” said Cavers. 

Cavers will put forward a notice of motion for city staff to review snow removal. 

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“If at the end of the day, they do find that we need to put more resources into certain areas, then that could potentially happen,” said Cavers. “Obviously the way the budgeting cycle happens, that wouldn’t be anything for this year. This year, we’re just going to have to ride it out.”

Since the snow stopped falling, the city has been trying to clear local roads and remove towering windrows. 

“Last evening, we began removing snow in the downtown core, so Seymour St., Victoria St. and Landsdowne St. When the snow gets a certain height, the windrows on the edge of the road, it’s impeding business, as well as parking of vehicles. It just becomes really ugly,” said streets and environmental services manager Glen Farrow. 

Farrow says crews will continue that effort into Monday night and make their way around the city. A series of snow events over the holidays made it difficult for workers to keep up, prompting an uptick in complaints from residents, especially those on side streets. 

“We get to all those areas. Do we get to them as soon as we’d like to?” asked Farrow. “Our service levels state 36 hours after a storm event, so there’s been times when we’ve had a storm event, we’ve been working through those locals, the snow begins to fall again, and we hit the reset button and we’re back to arterials.”

Farrow says that compares to 48 hours in Prince George after arterial roads are cleared. He added it’s hard to compare snow clearing operations from city to city. 

“It’s very different when we’re comparing ourselves to Vanderhoof or Quesnel when we’re talking they only have 100-150 kilometres of roadway compared to our 1,600 or 1,700,” he said. 

Cavers’ motion will be discussed at the Jan. 16 council meeting.