Ottawa needs major review of clearing standards for snow and ice, transportation committee says
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: April 3, 2019
The city is poised to do a sweeping review of its standards for clearing snow and ice after the transportation committee on Wednesday voted unanimously to recommend council launch a six-figure study.
Coun. Theresa Kavanagh won support from councillors on the committee to review the 16-year-old winter maintenance quality standards, but it would take staff a couple of years to produce the results of a study.
If council ratifies the committee recommendation next Wednesday, public works staff will start writing a study plan that they hope would be funded in the 2020 city budget. A study could cost in the range of $200,000 or more, but the price won’t be known until staff get a sense of the study’s scope.
Under the tentative plan, staff would have a report ready in 2021 with potential suggestions to change snow-clearing standards as part of the 2022 budget process. Increasing the standards would likely come with significant budget implications.
While some councillors questioned why the city needs to wait so long for a study, public works general manager Kevin Wylie said it’s impossible to advance the work by a year and still have a comprehensive study that includes data collection and public consultation.
There’s heat on council to improve the city’s plowing and ice-clearing after a particularly brutal winter.
The public works department could see if there are processes it can change in time for the next rollout of winter operations.
Coun. Stephen Blais, the chair of the transportation committee, won the committee’s support to complete an internal review of winter operations before the first snowflakes fly in the 2019-2020 winter. The proposed review would be different from the larger review on the standards.
Coun. George Darouze said any review by the city should consider how it deploys equipment when one area of Ottawa gets more precipitation than other areas.
Coun. Allan Hubley liked Blais’s motion on the short-term internal review, but he was reluctant to support a study on winter operations standards since he believes his residents want city hall to simply do a better job of clearing snow and ice.
“I don’t think any one of our residents really want to see a study,” Hubley said. “What they want to see is us do something to fix this.”
Kavanagh said climate change should be driving the city’s need to revisit the aging winter operations standards.
Stephen St. Denis, who has cerebral palsy and uses an electric wheelchair, told councillors they shouldn’t wait to study the standards.
St. Denis was recently the subject of a story in this newspaper after his wheelchair became stuck in a hole on a path, requiring help from first responders.
“Instead of looking at the cost of what it would take to provide adequate snow removal, let’s look at the cost of not doing it,” St. Denis told the committee. “How many people have injured themselves falling on the ice or having to climb snow banks? Isn’t that the real cost?”
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