OLDS — During town council’s Nov. 28 meeting, several councillors relayed complaints they received about how snow was cleared – or not cleared – especially in Uptowne, after the first couple of snowfalls this season.
Coun. Darren Wilson raised the issue, saying it came up during and Olds & District Chamber of Commerce meeting. Wilson represents the town on that group.
Initially at least, snow was cleared, but only in the middle of the streets and avenues, and pushed up into snowbanks along the sidewalks.
“They just wanted to stress the impact, the financial impact, that slow snow removal has to their business in terms of customers and people being able to get into the Uptowne area, park and access the businesses,” Wilson said.
Two snowstorms and a very windy day occurred at that time.
Wilson asked if there were other mitigating factors that prevented the snow being cleared in a more comprehensive fashion. He was aware that a grader was being repaired.
Chief administrative officer Brent Williams said some Uptowne businesses had contacted him as well to relay their concerns.
Williams said as far as he could recall, two snow “events” and a “wind event” occurred at that time.
“During those two events, basically we only move the snow to the side. We don’t actually commence snow removal,” he said.
Williams said a couple of days later, an advisory was issued for another weather event.
“The decision was made to not pick up the snow with the next snow event so close, just for financial and operational purposes,” he said.
Williams also said once snow clearing got underway in Uptowne, it was completed in a couple of days.
“There was a breakdown of the blower in that time, but by that time we had pretty much finished all but maybe 10 per cent; the purple route, I’ll call it,” Williams said. So that particular delay was very much purposeful.”
Coun. Heather Ryan said she too, received a snow-clearing complaint from the representative of a business who said a customer tried to climb over a snowbank to get into the business but “actually fell.”
And she too, thinks better communication is needed.
"I guess the problem is that when you do that, I think we need to put out some kind of advisory saying that we are delaying the clearing of the snow,” Ryan said.
Coun. Wanda Blatz said in the future, the town needs to do a better job of communicating to the public why snow is not being cleared right away after a storm “because I don’t think a lot of citizens understood what was happening and why snow wasn’t being moved.”
"If you follow social media all there were quite a lot of negative comments – somewhat derogatory sometimes even. So going forward, I just hope that we get better at informing our residents and citizens of what’s taking place,” she said.
Williams said he doesn’t follow social media so he could not speak to those comments.
As for the suggestion regarding communicating better with the public, he said his understanding is that currently, town officials only warn residents when they plan to remove snow and which routes they’ll be tackling.
The exceptions are the red routes and the purple routes in Uptowne.
“We could advertise the rationale for not proceeding,” Williams said.
Mayor Judy Dahl said she received information “every day” on snow removal. She wondered if that information could be relayed further.
Wilson said another related concern raised during the chamber of commerce meeting was the parking ban for vehicles in residential streets slated to be cleared of snow.
He asked why a parking ban is not in place for primary/collector streets.
Williams said that’s a question that will be brought to a future council meeting “more for discussion than decision,” he said.
“I’m not sure if we’ve been actually towing vehicles yet, but it’s something we recognize doesn’t make a lot of sense. So that’ll be coming back, just for update and direction, more or less,” he said.
Coun. James Cummings noted that snow clearing wasn’t on the Nov. 28 council agenda. He suggested it should be put on the agenda of a later meeting.
Dahl said the issue arose as Wilson reported on what he’d been doing for the last while.
“I’d like to remind you these are councillor reports and if they bring it up for discussion, I will entertain it,” she said.
