Letting snow pile up on the city's boulevards is among the measures Coun. Brian Skakun is suggesting to lessen the load taxpayers are shouldering for the snow control service.
Skakun raised the possibility during council's budget meeting on Feb. 11, when they approved a $1.5-million increase to the function, pushing the annual budget for the service up to $8.5 million.
The hike amounted to 1.5 percentage points of the 4.3-per-cent increase to the property tax levy, making it the single-largest component of the rise.
Skakun said nearly 6,000 truckloads of snow were reportedly transported to the city's snow dumps from mid-November to early-January.
"I've been on council awhile and I've never seen us haul that much snow," Skakun said.
"I did a lot of driving around today, and I counted kilometres where, in my opinion, we could've put snow on the sides of the roads or the meridians...to save a considerable amount of money."
Heights of the piles would still be reduced at intersections to provide sight lines for motorists and pedestrians, he added.
In reply, public works director Gina Layte Liston said concern over the windrows "sitting even for the period of time that they are sitting," generate the greatest number of service requests related to snow control and added they're removed in the name of traffic safety.
During a normal snowfall, she said the streets are cleared and then contractors go back to remove the piles.
"We also see loading out of areas that have one-way plows, specifically because of sidewalks and that loading out occurs also for the traffic and pedestrian safety reasons," Layte Liston said.
She also defended the practice, since 2014, of keeping four or five grader operators on monthly retainers, "so that when we call, they are there."
"That is an essential part of meeting the timelines during a normal snow event," she added. "Without those graders, there would be no way we could make those timelines."
Skakun claimed the practice of leaving the windrows untouched had been in place for years in the past. Roughly $900,000 is budgeted for sand removal in the spring and he said taking down those windrows could be included as part of that work rather than leaving it to contractors.
"I appreciate the work that we do on it but I think that we can do a little better with it and I'm just looking for ways that we don't have to haul all the snow away like we didn't do for decades," he said.
He also said Fort St. John spent less than $2 million to service about 350 kilometres of roads from which snow is removed from about 40 kilometres after it's cleared. Prince George snow control crews service 670 kilometres of roads and 189 kilometres of sidewalks.
Finance director Chris Dalio said the $8.5-million figure is based on the average amount the city has spent on snow control over the last five years combined with a goal of building up a contingency fund equal to a quarter of the annual operating cost.
In 2018, the city spent $9.7 million on snow control, in 2017, it was $7.1 million, in 2016 it was $5.3 million, in 2015, it was $7.6 million and in 2014, it was $7.3 million.
Coun. Frank Everitt struck a more supportive note for the increase, noting in part that a previous decision to remove retainers was a mistake that cost the city when a major snowfall occurred and not enough graders could be found because they were busy elsewhere.
"The other important thing is we're trying to put a contingency in place so we cannot go year after year and ask for an increase," he said. "And sometimes you take a little hit in that, but I tell you, it's nothing to the heat that we will take when we aren't able to meet the demand for snow removal that's out there within our community."
He also said the idea of removing the snow is to make room for the additional snowfall that will follow, "rather than waiting for the sunshine and the rain to take it away in the spring."
Coun. Murry Krause said he remembered when contractors were not in place and how horrible the roads were as a result and spoke in favour of building up a contingency fund.
"In the long run, it really is worth having money in the bank to cover off those years where the snowfall is particularly large," he said.
Coun. Susan Scott said she's heard "nothing but good things" over a recent move to clearing snow from residential streets during the night.
Council will be reviewing the snow control budget in the coming months and Layte Liston was asked to provide a figure for how much the city spends specifically on removing the snow once it's been cleared from the roads and streets.
Skakun also wants more detail on how the budget is spent, similar to the way he says it's presented to council in Williams Lake.
"They break their budget down into sidewalks, roads," Skakun said in an interview on Monday. "They report back I think yearly on how much they're over budget, under budget, a little bit more about how much it costs for contractors to haul snow."
