Regina gearing up for looming snowfall

REGINA – At a city council committee meeting Thursday afternoon, councillors discussed a report detailing how snow clearing went last winter.

The city received more than 400 complaints from people who weren’t pleased about snow piling up on their streets.

“There’s always ways to improve but I think overall, in fact I know we’re doing quite well compared to what we’ve done in years past,” said Mayor Michael Fougere ahead of Thursday’s meeting.

Last year’s harsh winter means the city is estimated to overspend by more than $1 million; however blowing the budget is not unique to 2014. Since 2009, the city overspent on average $1.8 million yearly.

“We replenish that reserve, so while we overspend on the annual budget, we have reserve to cover that off,” said Fougere.

In order to make up some of the hefty winter maintenance costs, the city is considering charging private snow removal companies to use the snow dump.

About 60 per cent of the snow that is trucked to the dump each year is from private companies.

“I think we’d be probably forced to pass a lot of those costs onto our customers if that were to happen,” said Monte Dobson, owner of Rapid Lawn Hydroseeding. “At this point it’s free, which is I think a great service to have but if we incur anymore costs in the wintertime, it would most certainly affect our business.”

Dobson estimates his company alone brought 500 dump trucks worth of snow to the dump last winter: “I would say we have double our snow removal business from last year so we are expecting quite a busy season.”

The mayor said there’s no plans to enforce a temporary parking ban on snow routes nor to make sidewalk clearing mandatory for homeowners.

“Maybe in the future we’ll make a more substantial program but for now it’s really just education,” said Fougere.