When the snow falls, and it soon will, the residents of this city expect trucks to roll in the same force they always have, and preferably greater.
The keepers of the city's snow removal budget have been given some slushy marching orders to trim the budget, assumedly as part of some edict from the top floors of city hall. A process is underway to present some options and get the public's feedback.
Well here's the feedback: plough the streets as you always have, or better.
As it currently stands, when the snow falls on Prince George and accumulates to 100 mm, an army of equipment rolls out. It is a combination of city-owned resources and extra contractors hired as needed. Together, it takes them about five days to clear the whole town. The typical year costs the city about $5 million.
Their four options can be summarized as such:
1. Use no contractors, but it would take eight to 10 days to finish the town. (Expected annual savings: $315,000)
2. Hold crews back until the accumulation gets to 150mm. (Expected annual savings: $135,000)
3. No ploughing the windrows of snow and ice off your driveway. (Expected annual savings: $170,000)
4. Leave the big windrows on the major thoroughfares. (Expected annual savings: $375,000).
The first two options would bog the city's motorists down in snow. The second two options, what?, are you trying to kill people? Option 3 demands that our elders and infirm shovel huge amounts of heavy snow. Enough heart attacks are tied to snow removal as it is. Option 4 blocks motorists' views and chokes the passageways on our busiest streets.
It's hard to fathom that we're even having this discussion, but this is the council that sports one member who once thought it clever to consider not ploughing residential streets at all.
Idiocy.
It's suggesting that we get economically healthier by clogging our economic arteries.
As if the potential hazards to life and property weren't enough, these schemes are guaranteed hazards to commerce and industry.
Imagine if a percentage of the city's labour force - customers, staff, managers, service providers - all failed at once to make it to work on time, or at all. Imagine medical appointments missed by the patient or even the doctor. Imagine a business already suffering through the economy having the days' sales cancelled. Imagine the school exams failed, the big meetings lost, the business contacts that missed each other, the groceries that couldn't get purchased for meals already hard to get onto the table.
If it was a world full of understanding people, that would be one thing, but we all know that weather events put us at the mercy of managers and clients who can't be counted on for empathy and why should they be?
We in Prince George all found it justifiably odd that balmy Kamloops and Kelowna would try to defy climatic reason and make a play for the Canada Winter Games. We, too, have to accept our place in the ecosystem.
We are a winter city.
Deal with it. Pay for it.
How you balance the budget is up for all kinds of debate (we respectfully suggest a significant cut to city staff, especially the six-figure management ranks) but snow clearing is not up for debate unless it is to increase service. Plough the streets as hard or harder than ever before, and don't come again asking us for cutbacks in that department.
