City Hall is open to hearing any ideas for doing the snow clearing in a better way. Manager of Transportation Al Clark said public reaction to the recent abundance of snow has been "mostly complimentary" towards clearance crews but there were some overtly rude callers.
Councillor Brian Skakun took them on in the pages of The Citizen, personally inviting complainers to ring him up at home instead of berating city staff who are merely doing the job asked of them by council, he said. At least 45 people took him up on the offer, he said.
Skakun himself said he thought more flexibility was needed within the policy, because some residential areas got double and triple doses of snow before they were plowed out.
"We are limited to the resources that we have provided to us within our budget," Clark said. "If there is a suggestion - maybe from the public or maybe from something observed by our staff or our contractors - we look at that and try to see how it would affect the resources we have. We have to see if it is even possible to do, first. Then, we have to figure out what might have to happen to facilitate that change. If we have to purchase a piece of equipment that is a capital expense so council would have to make that decision. Maybe we might have to shuffle around the employees we have or maybe we'd have to hire someone new. There are so many particulars."
Any suggestion for change would have to pass the feasibility test first, then the budget test. The affect on the taxpayer's bottom line is always the most important test, said Clark.
While some bemoan the onslaught of snow experienced in Prince George during the past week, it is not unprecedented even in recent years. Anyone who says this is some once-in-a-generation weather event "has a really, really short memory," Clark said. One only has to go back to 2008 when crews were still dealing with snow falls in March.
Spring of 2007 was another period of massive snowfall and simultaneous high winds that put thousands of residents into the dark.
In fall of 2006, the Provincial Emergency Program had to mobilize more than a dozen times to pluck imperiled lives out of danger, so much snow fell in such a short period of time all across Northern B.C. Three regional communities had to set up emergency operations centres to deal with the extreme weather's consequences.
