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Innuendo, with a chance of flurries

During a council meeting last January city operations superintendent Bill Gaal promised to make no excuses and lay no blame in explaining why a December snow storm had turned Prince George into a scene from Doctor Zhivago.
Rodney Venis

During a council meeting last January city operations superintendent Bill Gaal promised to make no excuses and lay no blame in explaining why a December snow storm had turned Prince George into a scene from Doctor Zhivago.

He then pointed a finger at city workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, saying a bitter year-long contract dispute with the city was one of the reasons why snow clearing was lacking.

"For the union president to say on this side of achieving a collective agreement that their actions had no impact on the snow and ice control operations is disingenuous," said Gaal in comments reported by another Prince George media outlet.

"When union presidents are talking strike, overtime bans and work-to-rule, making phone calls to contractors in efforts to dissuade them from working, to now say those efforts played no role is just plain wrong."

The dispute, which included city workers' first strike in Prince George history, had been resolved at the start of 2014. In addition to wage concessions, city hall also made staff a convenient scapegoat for the December snow clearing fiasco. In an email to a resident on the issue, Mayor Shari Green postulated, "Did work crews do their best? Well, you would have to ask their union president that, now that the contract is settled, their work seems to have improved. I would hate to think they used job action to receive a wage increase and put road safety in jeopardy to do it."

Quite. By the same token, one would hate to believe a senior city administrator and the mayor called workers greedy, inconsiderate and spiteful to distract attention from the inadequacies of the city's snow-clearing plans. But, if one were so inclined, a report for the city by U.S.-based Mercury Associates offers some thoughts.

Mercury outlines a number of areas where the city's existing policies constrict snow clearing efforts while also pointing out significant deficiencies in the city's ability to plan and prepare for a big storm.

For example, the report questions why crews must plow downtown the first night, which can leave major arterial roads neglected until the next night; the report argues both the downtown and main roads should be done on the same night. That's not something a city worker can decide, that's direction that comes from city hall.

There are gaps in standards and coverage, from the lack of a timeframe for completing snow clearing ("a new concept for the city of Prince George", an accompanying report to council reads) to winter staffing issues that leave almost one-fifth of an average week uncovered by a street employee. Mercury found "winter preparation tasks are not done in a well-organized manner"; the city doesn't subscribe to a commercial weather service; and the city isn't using its own weather station on Vellencher Road properly because it hasn't calibrated pavement temperature sensors.

When it came to the city's snow-clearing equipment, the consultants said much of it was worn out and suffering from deferred maintenance and repairs.

More interesting still was the report's take on contractors. While it didn't mention Gaal's accusations union brass intimidated local businesses, it did say "a shortage of contractor graders is the bottleneck that significantly restricted [the city's] capacity to provide snow clearing last winter." Mercury writes that of the 14 contractor graders available to the city, one showed up to work in December; the city had to lease two graders and train two operators but even then it still had only seven graders when 10 are required to clear the city of snow.

While the report acknowledges demand for equipment in the region has increased due to surges in the logging and mining industry, it identifies two shortfalls in city policy that have exacerbated the situation. The city used to put a grader contractor on retainer for the winter but stopped; one contractor was also kept waiting on a city hiring decision and opted to work for other clients. Secondly, the city's rental equipment bidding system is "unsustainable" - by opting for the lowest bid price, which skews towards older machinery, the city "is not effective in attracting operators with new equipment."

That problem has become "more critical and unmanageable" as "old equipment is retired and new equipment contractors choose to work elsewhere."

According to the Internet, the word disingenuous comes from "lacking in candor." Hopefully taxpayers can expect more candor and less innuendo from city hall, as well as the improvements offered by Mercury, when the snow next flies in Prince George.