Re:Snow-going
When I read this article the first thing that came to mind was, what expectations does the city have in hiring this company? Perhaps pull a rabbit from a hat or maybe a magic spell? Prince George touts itself as a winter city and yet we find it necessary to hire a US based company to tell us how to remove snow, when we should be the authority and other communities should be looking to us for advice. This in itself is somewhat embarrassing.
As it is they did have some suggestions. -pre winter planning and maintaining of equipment (hmm what a novel idea), an erasable white board to show the areas completed (so how is it done now? perhaps a dart board?), routing maps for sanding and plowing (again is this the dart board approach?) to be signed off by the foreman (yep there has to be a fall guy), putting private contactors on retainer (does the city expect these people to be at their beck and call without some sort of guaranteed income when there is money to be made elsewhere?), and a more accurate way of predicting the weather (and no a bigger window isn't going to buy it)
It seems to me that all these solutions could have be found in house without the need for outsourcing, just by listening to your employees. Now the question is how much did all this cost us?
Peter K. McLellan
Prince George
