City seeking feedback on snow removal and sweeping
By Lethbridge Herald on January 5, 2022.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
A Bobcat operator clears snow Wednesday along one of the City’s pathways. The City is asking citizens to give feedback on the quality of snow removal and street sweeping services.Al Beeber – Lethbridge Herald
City residents are being asked their opinion about the quality of snow removal and street sweeping services.
A survey is being conducted by the City until Feb. 13 at getinvolvedlethbridge.ca.
Results of the survey will be given to city council to address in the spring.
Options for sweeping include maintaining the status quo, reducing service or increasing it.
Transportation Operations manager Juliane Ruck discussed the survey Wednesday and options that are available for residents to offer their feedback on.
“We are engaging the public to find out what they think about the current snow and ice control and potential service level changes and also our street sweeping services,” said Ruck.
The survey is based on a KPMG recommendation in 2020 that the city has to look at “different service level options for snow and ice control and street sweeping,” said Ruck.
“We hope that lots of residents will participate,” she added.
Ruck said street sweeping operations are conducted in three separate seasons.
Spring street sweeping is done in residential surface streets with efforts made to cover most of the city.
“We had some budget cuts of $135,000 in the last year so we had to cut our service levels a little bit and we were not able to cover all communities during our program last year. So that’s kind of the status right now for the residential street sweeping.”
The city also has industrial summer sweeping involving nighttime sweeping of downtown and the industrial park.
In the fall, a sweeping program clears areas that have lots of trees and falling leaves to keep drainage clear.
“For the snow and ice controls program, today we follow a snow and ice control policy” with three priorities for snow plowing, she said.
The first focus is on plowing and in extreme winter events, the City also does snow removal.
“That means there is so much snow accumulating on the streets now that it impedes traffic flow. Then we have to move it into berms in the middle of the road.” This can become costly, Ruck said.
“When KPMG looked at service levels in other communities, they found that other communities seemed to focus more on the plowing and not as much as on the snow removal. That’s why we are conducting the service right now to find out what the residents of Lethbridge think.”
Ruck said areas missed by street sweeping in 2021 will be hit this year.
“We are committed to rotating that so that at least every area will be covered every year” but it depends on how much work has to be done due to the amount of sand that is spread on residential streets during winter, Ruck added.
In winter “we sand a lot of areas in residential areas. So the more sand we put on the roads, the more sweeping we have to do and the more material we have to pick up.”
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23-22
Ask for opinions, but who in City Hall is going to listen? They’ll end up doing it their way anyhow.
Remember the front trash pickup?..
Time for a witch hunt through City Hall.