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Edmontonians who fail to shovel their sidewalks or move vehicles during a parking ban may face more late next winter.
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City councilors on Monday landed on a shortlist of options they want factored into next winter’s snow and ice budget when administration comes back to them with a more detailed report in June. The future of how the city clears snow and ice in the winter has been debated in recent weeks, with staff warning it could cost tens of millions of dollars more to clear roads and pathways according to the timelines Edmontonians seem to expect.
Forcing vehicles to move during parking bans either with courtesy tows — which could cost $250,000 annually — is one item council will review later this year. Coun. Andrew Knack said this is potentially one expense that can be offloaded to drivers who don’t follow the rules.
“We just need to tow the cars, but we might as well charge them for it,” he said, adding he could go either way on free or paid tows. Knack said frontline city employees told him this has been a problem for snow clearing and street sweeping as well.
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“We need the cars off the road. The crews cannot do a good enough job if the cars are on the road.”
Increasing enforcement on mandatory sidewalk shoveling also made the shortlist. Increasing patrols and ticketing by adding six bylaw officers would cost another $800,000.
budget-boost
No decision has been made, but council showed the most interest in two approaches to the snow clearing on Monday: increasing the budget by $20 million or $42 million.
The first option would speed up clearing by 30 per cent while the second would be about 45 per cent faster and get all the city-owned snow-clearing equipment out on the roads.
Speaking to reporters, Coun. Tim Cartmell said the recent staff report confirmed concerns he heard in recent years that city snow clearing efforts haven’t been running at full capacity, despite assurances this wasn’t the case.
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“It seemed that there were fewer trucks doing less work and taking longer to get to the neighbourhood,” he said. “We finally agree (on) what we’ve been doing, and we finally agree that it’s not very good.
“I want to see us activate our equipment and start with that, and see where we can go, and just step into this carefully before we layer on a bunch more expectations, a bunch more cost.”
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Last year, the city auditor recommended a suite of changes to the snow and ice program after an audit was triggered by an anonymous letter alleging mismanagement in the branch.
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Coun. Erin Rutherford said snow clearing is a core area that needs more funding.
“If there’s people who cannot leave their houses because they cannot move around, they cannot get on a bus, that is a problem because we are not building a city for everyone,” she said during the meeting. “I would rather cut other things when we have that discussion at budget than this fundamental service.”
Clearing public squares and internal paved pathways in parks and playgrounds, clearing residential windrows, blocking driveways and curb cuts, removing windrows on both sides of the road near schools, and a program to help people who can’t remove their own snow, and changing locations and supply for sandboxes are other items council will review this summer.
