After running letters to the editor complaining about snow and ice removal in the city of Williams Lake, the Tribune accepted an invitation from the city to ride along with its snow removal crew on Jan. 9.
At 8 p.m., the crew was in full force. Two sidewalk machines were removing snow from sidewalks and curbs and piling it onto the street.
With transformer-like moves, a grader followed behind, pushing the snow to the centre of the streets. The next evening, a dump truck would haul the piles of snow to the city snow dump at the foot of Comer Street.
Kevin Goldfuss, director of municipal services, said his annual snow removal budget is $495,000. His year end is Dec. 31, so since Jan. 1 he’s been working on a provisional budget for 2013 that will have to be approved by city council later in the spring.
“With that snow budget I have to do everything,” Goldfuss said.
From Monday to Friday, a six person crew operates per shift to achieve all aspects of ice and snow control.
The city has 12 road crew staff, five sand trucks equipped with underbelly plows, two sidewalk machines, one grader, three loaders, and one snowblower.
Crews can only work in the downtown core in the evening because of traffic and when most businesses are closed.
Depending on the accumulation of snow, it takes eight to 12 hours, working through the night, to bring all the snow to the middle of the street, Goldfuss said.
The next night starting at 8 p.m. the blower, along with seven to eight trucks, seven that are contracted out, haul the snow away.
Wednesday evening was the third time the downtown core had been “cleaned up” over the last three weeks.
The first time was on Dec. 16. The second time was Dec. 28.
“All the while that this is going on, sand trucks are keeping the streets open, sidewalk machines are going, and staff are on the ground shovelling by hand all the city stairs and different pathways the sidewalk machines can’t get to,” Goldfuss said. “Those all have to be attended to on a daily basis.”
Every subdivision within the city — approximately 120 kilometres of streets and 45 to 50 kilometres of sidewalks — also need attention.
It takes about 16 hours to complete the entire city. But that’s if it’s not snowing.
“What happens quite often, in a winter like this, is we just get it cleaned up and then it starts snowing,” Goldfuss said. “It can snow four to six inches overnight and people come downtown and think the city hasn’t done anything. That happened on Dec. 28 actually.”
He has received calls from citizens, and recently one caller said he’d noticed a significant change in the level of service from previous years.
“I told him he’s right,” Goldfuss explained. “It’s a result of the garbage cart system. Two years ago when the city adopted the garbage and recycling cart program, the garbage collection system changed.”
In the past, the city would choose areas for snow and ice control in residential areas based on priorities such as hills and troubled areas.
Now the city has to follow the garbage collection route and tries to stay one day ahead of the route.
“If your pickup is on Thursday then we need to get in there on Wednesday to clean it up so when you put out your carts Thursday morning you don’t have challenges with high accumulations of snow.”
Even if it snows again, residents probably won’t see operations back in their neighbourhood until the night before the next garbage pick up.
“So that’s a whole week that’s gone by, but you will have seen a sand truck come through, and maybe a sidewalk machine if there are sidewalks in your area, but you won’t see the heavy machinery because they are attending to the garbage pickup route.”
Compounding that is the city’s snow and ice control policy that dictates accumulations of 5 centimetres or more that are measured at the public works yard, mean crews have to remove snow from the downtown core.
“Everything in the real world works good if it’s not snowing, but if it starts snowing I have to pull my crews off the residential areas and put them to work in the downtown core,” Goldfuss added.
In addition there are priority areas like schools, hospitals and the fire hall, along with the road network that allows people to travel to and from work.
Parking, he admitted, is secondary to having the roads cleared.
Wyatt Ball, has been an equipment operator with the city for seven years.
This year the snow is lasting longer, he said. “In 2011/2012, there were more melts in between.”
While riding along with him in the grader, it became apparent how frustrating it can be when vehicles are parked on the city streets during winter months, especially when there is snow on the ground that needs removal.
“In residential areas I’ve had people purposely park on the street so I cannot remove the snow because they don’t want it on their boulevards,” Ball said. “They’ll sit in the house and stare out the window at me.”
As he worked on Borland Street near Laketown Furnishings, a car drove down the block toward the grader.
“If you could see us coming down the block, I would hope that you would turn and avoid us instead of driving straight toward the machinery,” Ball said, shaking his head.
Talking on the radio with the other machine operator, Ball agreed to leave and go to another area because there were too many vehicles parked on the street at that moment.