Climate change prognosticators have foretold that Sault’s weather is changing, and it certainly has: back to where it started as a Winter City.
We have heard it all: extreme weather events, global warming, increased/decreased lake levels, and excessive temperature ranges. But no matter how many changes there are, the Sault will always be a Winter City. Being a Winter City means we can get a lot of snow, and this November and December certainly proved that by dumping it all at the same time.
In the last decade, we have experienced winters with less snow and snow accumulations late in the season. This has allowed the City budget to shrink for snow plowing, clearing, and maintenance. Last year, there was a surplus of funds as the amount of work to plow and remove the snow was unusually low. Many streets in our City did not require snow removal, and/or the number of times snow was removed decreased.
In the last few years, city maintenance crews have completed less street snow plowing and street snowbank removal than in prior years. For many years now, ice/snow windrows, the piles of ice chunks and snow left at the bottom of a driveway after snow plows have cleared/scraped the road, have not been removed by our City Maintenance Crews.
Driveway windrow clearing was a service the City Maintenance Crews provided using a front-end “Payloader” that followed a snowplow/grader. The Payloader picked up the ice chunks and snow windrow from the driveway and dumped it in the snowbank. This service was essential, especially when snow accumulations were packed down on the street over time, and the road was finally scraped down to the asphalt, resulting in significant accumulations in the driveway. An ice chunk/ snowpack windrow is extremely difficult to shovel or snow-blow. It requires heavy machine construction equipment or extensive manpower using a steel shovel; indeed, not work for Seniors in our community.
At a City Council meeting in September of 2018, Ward #1 Councillors pressed the City Administration to provide a windrow removal service since some Cities in Ontario provided it for their residents. Mr. Tom Vair, the Deputy CAO, stated with the current level of funding, the City will not be able to remove the windrows because the Sault receives too much snow, compared to other Cities in Ontario that did remove the windrows for their City residents.
The mere acknowledgment that our City receives more snow than other cities should have been a clue that, in fact, we needed this service. Along with being a Winter City, our City has a high percentage of Seniors, which explains why one local “snow-blowing” company has over 3,300 residential snow-blowing contracts. Our citizens are getting older and are choosing to stay in their homes. Another statistic indicates that 30% of households have only one resident per household.
Where are City Administrators’ priorities! Is the priority hiring a Downtown Plaza Party Planner ($97K), Film Production / Tourism Manager ($100.5K), and a myriad of other people who have no business being at the Civic Centre, or do we spend money on windrow snow removal for seniors?
Again, it is essential to remember that the Sault will always be a Winter City.
Mark Menean
Sault Blog 
Leave a comment