While management and staff still have to put their heads together to discuss ways to improve on last month's snow clearing challenges, some changes are already in place for this year, said the head of the department.
In a report to council Monday night, operations superintendent Bill Gaal said staff are working on the implementation of a new full afternoon sidewalk clearing shift, made possible with funds saved from council's change of the residential street clearing threshold from 10 centimetres to 12 cm.
When it comes to equipment, in addition to borrowing graders from the airport, neighbouring communities and paving company Columbia Bitulithic, Gaal also said staff are investigating Coun. Cameron Stolz's suggestion to imitate New York in adding plowing blades to garbage trucks.
"We believe this is a valuable idea and we are evaluating operation models with the trucks to determine what capital requirements are needed," Gaal said.
The city has also been in conversations with grader suppliers to lease equipment for use this season.
"This will include training opportunities for staff, increasing the number of employees capable of operating graders from 18 to 21," Gaal said.
Just because it failed for the recent storm doesn't mean council's snow and ice control policy isn't working, Gaal stressed.
"Council does not need to change that policy. Events over the last month were not unusual, we did not treat it unusually but our efforts failed, fell short. But that does not mean the policy is flawed," he said.
Mayor Shari Green said letting staff have that conversation about why it fell short is why she voiced her opposition to Coun. Albert Koehler's intent to call for a special committee on snow clearing.
"I know there's tons of ideas and frustrations on the part of everybody involved in the city side of things as well. And they need a chance to sit down and do that work together without feeling like they've got the eye of council sitting at the table with them," she said. "We are not operations, we do not micro manage what they do. We set policy and we set a budget. And what I clearly heard Mr. Gaal say was the policy isn't broken, but this snow event didn't work for us."
Early identified changes that need to be made include better communication of the city's snow-clearing activities.
On Monday, Stolz asked if the daily updates he received could be posted to the city website.
"What we have talked about is to do some real time updating in the future. So we could provide information to the public on which areas our crews are going to be in for that day and that night... so there would be regular website updates," said city manager Beth James. "That was not done and we could have improved on that."
Other communities have also taken the step of posting GPS data from plowing equipment, which is something James said staff would like the chance to evaluate and bring back to council for consideration.
"Calgary has GPS and I hear it's kind of clunky so I'm not sure if it's fabulous or not. If it is, great, we'd love to look at it," said Green, but added that "all those things cost money. And people would say 'I'd rather you spend that money plowing than worrying about things like that.'"
