72 hours too long for the disabled to wait for snow removal
By Lethbridge Herald on November 27, 2024.
Editor:
The city explained to people on the new snow routes that if they were disabled that they could apply to the city to have their windrows removed after the city plowed the streets.
Last year was an experiment with snow routes and that they might acquire equipment to help homeowners with their windrows. So I figured the city would likely purchase a snow gate for their grader and that would solve the issue, so paid my snow removal guy double for every time he had to return to my house to remove the windrow.
Well, this is day one of the plowing (Nov. 25) so after the plow went through I expected to see someone following the plough because there was no snow gate on the plow?
It didn’t happen, so I waited and waited, nothing. I called 311 and was told the city signed a contract with the windrow contractor that allows up to 72 hours maximum for them to clear the windrow for disabled people.
When I said that was unacceptable because you are locking disabled people in their homes for up to 72 hours the response was “how did you do it last year”?
I replied that I had to pay my snow removal guy double because he had to come back twice for every snow storm.
There was an unreasonable pause at the other end as if I had solved my own problem. The 311 conversation then came to an end.
So instead of buying a snow gate which fits to the end of the plow and is dropped by the plow operator to stop a driveway fill, the disabled now must wait up to 72 hours, or pay privately for the City’s lack of technology that has been around for decades! Is that the best we can do?
Dennis Bremner
Lethbridge
12-11
Do citizens of Lethbridge also get 72 hrs. to shovel” their” sidewalks? Same idea,accessibility.
You can’t find a young man to pay to help you do it? My grandsons have several friends who do it, like I did when I was 12 to 16 years old for 4 widows in our area.
Yes these snow routes are a problem but the massive amount that would be needed to be added to our property taxes would be huge while these Reformer friends of Dennis give away billions in oil royalties and corporate taxes and underfund our municipalities like they are doing.
Too bad Dennis didn’t live in Alberta when Lougheed was running the province properly by collecting the proper oil and corporate tax wealth like Alaska and Norway are doing isn’t it?
I have a contractor that clears my 250 feet of city sidewalk and my driveway and the windrow. He does so on his schedule not the cities! So if he is finished cleaning my property at 7:30 and the city does not plow the snow route until 9AM then “IF” my contractor has time, he will come back, for a fee, if not available, I am stuck.
very good letter and reply. there are cities in canada that clear all their roads, AND sidewalks, and they do so in far heavier hit snow zones than ours, and seem to do so with reasonable taxation.
the issue too long standing for lethbridge is that we pay high taxes for what seems poor value. never a city audit… i wonder why. an audit of the exhibition has shed some light; might an audit of how the city manages our money shed light on the bigger picture?
bad enough residents have to clear sidewalks in this city – especially given the tax rake – but, to have to pay extra because of how poorly the city ploughs?
Are you going to ignore the fact that they aren’t being funded anywhere near what they were under the Lougheed government when snowfalls were huge compared today’s. Do you ignore the fact that they no longer own their own equipment and are at the mercy of private operators? One winter in Edmonton they discovered that 75 of their grader operators had taken their graders to Fort MacMurray and hadn’t warned anyone about it? I had an uncle who was a welder working on repairing City of Edmonton graders and equipment for about 35 years. It’s no secret that Klein privatized road maintenance in Alberta, as former conservative MLAs told us and it increased the cost to taxpayers by 300%. They were furious with him for doing it.
good points – all. i recall here, perhaps 15 years ago, the city had a new grader, the best we had, and then sold it off for a fraction of the cost…because we had a warmer than usual winter the prior year. it is that kind of silliness, and maybe graft, that irks me and has me calling for audits. as far as i am aware, the city has never audited its land deals, its sales of pretty much anything….i believe there is much to be gained by having regular audits, and an initial one. we pay a pretty high tax rate and do not seem to be getting fair value.
I rember from a hundred years ago, everyone just stayed at home.
After years of being involved with mayors and their councillors , as a Royal Bank Manager, I have no respect for people who support a provincial government that is deliberately making their lives a living hell by not providing them with proper funding while they help their rich friends steal the peoples oil and corporate tax wealth like we have seen in Alberta starting with the Klein government.
It’s no surprise to me that we have ,on average, the highest property taxes in Canada and the highest number of people per capita needing help from the food banks is it?
Who do we blame? Gullible, mostly seniors, believing every lie these Reformers feed them, too stupid to realize what they have done and are doing to us and the leadership review in Red Deer proves it, doesn’t it? I hope I have been sarcastic enough I intended to be.
I know these mayors and councillors are doing the best they can while they deal with the stupidity they are forced to deal with so stop attacking them for something these Reformers are creating?
Find yourselves a lawyer, accountant, economist, banker, oilman of former Conservative MLA and see if I am wrong.
you have a disease, you can link any and all conversations to Dead Conservatives or Reformers, you should seek help.
Some of us aren’t dumb enough to ignore what these dead conservatives did for the good of the people before these Reformers got control and destroyed it all. Are you so naive that you are ignoring the fact that they were elected under the Reform Party name like Stephen Harper was.
So why are you prepared to ignore the fact that they have screwed Albertans out of at least $1 trillion? A former oil executive in Mexico tells us he thinks it’s likely $1.2 trillion and the figures acquired in Alaska and Norway prove he’s right.
I just don’t follow you, you seem to be all over the SAME map. There is a prayer “grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed, courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other “
Your problem is you do not have the wisdom to know one from the other!
I realize that my comments might come off critical of 311. Thats not the case, I find them very helpful but the dead silence at the end of the conversation that resulted in User or Disabled pay is obviously the only thing 311 can offer.
I will pay if I have too, but what about those that cannot afford to pay? What caused the letter is my wife was out shopping. She came back and the driveway was filled in by the plow. So a 77 year old woman, was out there shoveling the windrow? So does she hump the groceries in from the street and leave her car there on the snow route, hoping the contractor will show up? Few can wait 72 hours to find out.
Perhaps I expected too much? Here is a picture of a SnowGate.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/feb/13/what-residents-should-know-about-popular-snow-gate/
So why, when paying $1000s a month for taxes does a “City” still make it so ANY resident has to clean up their windrow? It should not be just disabled, everyone on a snow route should not have to shovel city snow, period. Cities have already conned us into cleaning THIER sidewalks. I personally am having great difficulty why ANYONE should have a heart attack shovelling CITY snow, it surprises me there have not been more lawsuits in this regard.
How are you paying $1,000. per month for taxes ??? When we lived in St. Albert for 14 years when our roads were plowed there were 4 bobcats that followed the graders that cleaned out the entrances to our driveways. That’s gone in Edmonton with these Reformers in charge and last night our road was plowed at about 9pm, we are on a bus route, and about a two foot windrow left across our driveways. Our female neighbour saw me trying to clear it this morning and came to help. We couldn’t believe how hard it had become overnight. The neighbour, another senior, across the street has one about 3 ft high and he tried to drive through it and that didn’t work. When his wife was getting out of the car to look at it she fell down and he could have run over her when he pulled ahead. We went to help her get up. Our next door neighbour was furious with what we are having to put up with especially the fact that she was a nurse fired by Ralph Klein and is now working in the oil industry. Although she is making more money she felt she was intended to help people as a nurse. Our nephew feels the same way he lost job as a nurse and his wish was to help children at the children’s hospital in Calgary. Like our neighbour he was forced to change careers.
How are you paying $1,000. per month for taxes ???
I am referring to all people on the snow route.
The reformers took out the ‘S. 1000’s became 1000 and confused the confused one even more.