Big snowfall produces avalanche of complaints in Richmond Hill

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 18, 2014
By Kim Zarzour

Town staff and local councillors were snowed under with an avalanche of complaints following last week’s winter storm.

Shane Baker, commissioner of community services, said the municipality fielded more complaints than normal after Thursday’s sudden snowfall and he pointed to a culmination of factors, from weather monitoring that predicted 14 cm of snow - but 25 cm fell in a short period of time - to changes to the plowing procedure.

“Maybe we tried to take on too many changes at one time,” he said at a council meeting Monday.

The town was inundated with calls, but the worst problems were in four of the 24 response routes - in Oak Ridges and Wards 4 and 5 (west of Yonge Street), he said.

Three of those were the responsibility of internal staff, and one was assigned to contracted plowers.

An investigation is under way to determine what went wrong, he said, and there are plans to set up a “war room” in the operations centre for the next storm, similar to what was organized during last year’s ice storm, with maps showing where clean-up problems are developing, so they can be dealt with quickly.

“Management understands and is aware we were not up to par and we will be working to correct that,” Baker said.

It was the second lengthy snow discussion in as many weeks,  this time with councillors sharing a litany of problems they’d been hearing from residents in the last four days.

Regional councillor Vito Spatafora heard from drivers who could not access their unplowed streets. When they left their cars on the road, they were ticketed, he said, “which added insult to injury”.

Ward 1 Councillor Greg Beros said three routes in his ward were not touched by plows.

“My phones, emails, Facebook, Twitter were all going crazy,” he said. “Never in my eight years have I had a situation like this.”

Baker said the snow started falling at 1 a.m. Thursday morning and did not let up until supper hour that day. Staff began clearing roads at 2 a.m. but after 13 hours on the job, had to pull off the road for their legislated eight-hour break.

“This made it really tough to keep up.”

Beros wasn’t satisfied with that explanation, suggesting “there’s a deeper problem we’re not hearing about...Maybe they weren’t plowing when they said they were?”

“I don’t know yet,” Baker said. “We are still investigating.”

Ward 3 Councillor Castro Liu said “people called me like crazy”, primarily to report troubles on courts. With more snow in the forecast, he asked for reassurance problems won’t be repeated.

If another storm occurs before the investigation is complete and resolved, Baker said, the town will return to some of the previous ways of handling snow clearing. Public works had just launched new procedures that were modeled on best practices.

Tom Muench, ward 2 councillor, said he received complaints about sidewalk plows digging up grass.

Baker said the challenge stems from a “narrow margin of error” on walkways. Often with new snowfall, those who clear sidewalks must guess where the path is, he said, and when the ground is not yet frozen and grass is damaged, staff will make repairs in the spring.

Mayor Dave Barrow said residents reported many problems with courts, while others worried about students having to walk on roads because sidewalks near schools weren’t cleared.

“All of us know it wasn’t our stellar day of snow removal...but I don’t want to be looking for who to blame for this.”

Instead, he said, the town should determine what went wrong and work to resolve it.

Ward 5 Councillor Karen Cilevitz said she heard from residents on 23 streets in Ward 5, many seniors with windrows not being cleared.

Cilevitz suggested the town dedicate one staff person to manage windrow clearing for seniors and those with disabilities who registered for the service.

A variety of options and cost estimates for earlier windrow clearing and town-wide services are expected to be presented during the budget process next year.