After last week's dumping of snow, City Hall is now getting dumped on by local residents over their handling of snow clearing.
Concerns about road clearing ended up dominating the early portion of the meeting Monday. Councillors relayed a litany of complaints they received from fed-up residents in the wake of last week's heavy snow and wind over a number of days.
Questions at the meeting focused on why some roads received priority while others were still not finished days later.
Councillor Ryan Bater noted he was inundated with Facebook messages and phone calls expressing frustration with the process.
Many primary routes weren't completed within the three-day time frame of the current policy, said Bater, "and then a lot of secondary routes, which I believe are to be completed within five days, or maybe six days is the norm, weren't completed."
He said Douglas Avenue has not been cleared to date.
Bater also pointed to a situation in a residential neighborhood in the city's northwest where Thomas Avenue and part of Foley Drive were cleared, but the remainder of Foley, Abbott Avenue, Panton Avenue and 95th Street were not.
"At that time 100th Street had snow piled up and down the meridians," noted Bater, who pointed to other parts of downtown as well as 110th as trouble spots.
"We have a number of primary and secondary streets which were not cleared, but there was a residential street that was," said Bater, seeking an explanation from administration.
Public Works Director Stewart Schafer responded that on the very first day of the snowfall on the weekend, "we had a broken waterline," so the first priority was fixing that.
He was referring to a water main break on 109th Street that was caused when someone hit a hydrant around 5 a.m. Dec. 3. City crews spent all day addressing the problem.
In the downtown area, Schafer noted the snow removal is usually left to the second day of the three-day snow cleanup period, to allow merchants to remove the snow off the sidewalks.
If crews cannot complete the rest of the primary route due to traffic or parking issues that day, they would start on their scheduled routes and try and get them started, explaining why Thomas Avenue and part of Foley Drive got started, according to Schafer.
Tuesday the city was hit again by a twin snowstorm "which started us back at the beginning," said Schafer.
Schafer also noted there were "only so many of us around" to deal with the situation and "we were running pretty hard." He noted they did find a few errors and pledged "we'll correct them later on the next snowfall."
That answer didn't seem to satisfy Bater, who wondered if public works had enough staff to deal with snowfall within the city's policies.
Councillor Trent Houk wasn't satisfied either.
"Never, in my three years here, have I dealt with so many complaints in one week's time," he said.
Houk talked about the situation at bus stops along the transit route for people entering and exiting the buses. "The buses are unable to load and unload people safely." Houk also added the City should "look at our policy along with this new transit system to see what is priority, because I've seen buses struggle to get around."
He repeated an earlier suggestion that the surplus money left over from the years of no snow be used to hire contractors to deal with snow removal in the years when there is. "Let's get the ball rolling, let's get the city cleaned up."
City Manager Jim Toye acknowledged it was "disappointing we did not have all the primary and secondary done by now" and apologized for the situation, but also added that they hadn't had a situation where seven or eight inches would have fallen.
He pledged to "re-evaluate the number of staff that we do have" and have some "good dialogue" on the issue when the budget is discussed in the next month.
As for the situation at the bus stops, Toye noted clearing the bus stops is definitely a City responsibility. He pledged dialogue with general manager Al Love of the transit system to see where the trouble spots are and which ones are priorities so that all of those can be done in a short period of time.
The snow situation was on the minds of pretty much the entire council Monday. Councillor Don Buglas noted concern about the snow in and around BTEC, while Councillor Greg Lightfoot noted he had calls about the situation and particularly noted two feet of snow off the east side of the sidewalk in the Killdeer area. Lightfoot also pledged the issues at the bus stops would be discussed at that week's transit meeting.
Not all the comments were negative, though. Counillor Cathy Richardson noted she had been in Saskatoon where she and others noticed an even worse snow clearing situation compared to North Battleford.
"We have it good here in North Battleford," was Richardson's comment.
