Edmonton just experienced the driest November on record, but a snow-free month doesn’t automatically mean cost savings for the city.
Roughly 600 internal city staff are hired as part of the snow and ice program.
“They are getting paid but they’re definitely not sitting around,” explained Mark Beare of the city’s Parks and Roads Service.
All of them have been redeployed — 300 to work on roadways and 300 to work on active pathways. Beare said the roadways crews work on things like pothole filling, road maintenance, alley and sidewalk repair, graffiti removal and infrastructure maintenance.
He said the active pathways crews work on loose litter pickup, illegal dumping, horticulture and vacant encampment cleanup.
Beare said crews repaired more than 15,000 potholes last week (adding to the 620,348 potholes repaired year to date), added mulch to 20,000 square metres of shrub beds, and picked up more than 3,000 bags of garbage.
“For staff, they’re hired on to clear snow and they’d be worried about their jobs,” Beare said. “But we really value our internal staff. And that’s the great thing about having internal staff within the city: we can redeploy them to other essential work and make the city a better place.”
There are a few areas where a dry November translates to savings.
“We have seen significant savings for contracted services within the city, as well as some labour savings for things like budgeted overtime, fuel, materials,” Beare said.
And, Edmonton winters are unpredictable so Beare said it’s too early to predict any potential cost savings on the snow and ice program.
“That money is assigned to deliver the city’s snow and ice program and any money that we don’t spend at the end of the year gets returned to the city as part of their Financial Stabilization Reserve … to redirect to other priorities.”
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Coun. Erin Rutherford said that the reserve fund will be at a deficit by the end of this year so any extra money “would most likely be in next year’s budget.”
Edmonton’s snow and ice control program is comprised of both city and contracted crews, Beare said. The contracted services are on a call-in basis and haven’t been required as much as usual this year.
Beare said it could mean savings, adding that seasonal savings are being tallied and will be available at year’s end.
On the other side of the coin, contractors and their employees say they aren’t as thrilled with the snow-free November.
“We’re definitely not getting the extra hours for the employees,” said Jean-Paul Mullen, owner of Griffin Landscaping and Snow Removal Inc.
“The hours have been drastically cut. It alleviates us from a little bit of our responsibilities, … from our gas or diesel and hourly for the labour, but other than that, it’s definitely taking money away from our guys and our ability to make more money for this season.”
Mullen said he’s not expecting any significant snowfall any time soon.
“It may be a unique year … less work.”
He said employees are given a guarantee of 60 hours of work every two weeks but they’re not making any money on overtime.
“Without the snowfalls, they’re not getting full hourly pay cheques. They’re not reaching 80 hours and/or overtime.”
Griffin gets a lot of its business from private contracts where it plows snow for shopping malls, car dealerships and industrial lots. While the company has monthly contract agreements, it’s losing money on the extras, like carting that accumulated snow off-site.