Putting recommendations to improve the city's snow operations and fleet services into practice could cost upwards of $485,000, according to a city staff report.
During Monday night's meeting, city council will hear from the public works department on their plan to implement suggestions resulting from a third-party review by Mercury Associates.
The city paid the Maryland-based consultants $131,900 to conduct a review of Prince George's fleet, fleet replacement practices and snow and ice control between May and July.
"While the city's snow and ice control processes were unchanged in 2013-2014, a series of unusual weather events compounded by difficulties in securing adequate equipment and operators led to a particularly challenging snow season," said a report from public works director Bill Gaal.
A staff review of the Mercury report's 46 recommendations created 36 action items, the majority of which were identified as not having any budget impacts, such as changing the snow and ice control procedure to adjust how priority streets are cleared, creating a work calendar for pre-winter preparations, assigning employees to calibrate equipment and working with the outside employees union to establish better weekend coverage.
Of the items with costs attached, $400,000 are capital costs and $85,000 are operating costs. That money would cover things such as installing signs to indicate the snow routes recommended to return, the annual costs of a peer-training program and subscribing to a weather forecast for a snow season, installing two additional weather stations and purchasing a telematics system for the heavy and light duty fleet.
But there are a variety of costs yet to be determined such as for setting snow removal completion timeframes, updating the salt management plan and changing the fleet replacement model. Those costs will be covered in future reports to council.
