City council met on Wednesday to discuss Saskatoon’s solution to finance the 2022 snow removal.
City administration asked council to approve the borrowing of money to fund the response project and a 10 per cent variance on the borrowing requirements.
Council approved a loan of approximately $20 million.
Once they know the final costs of 2022, administration plans to internally or externally borrow the funds.
Councillors are already looking to the next winter season and are hoping to make things more manageable.
“If someone could just give us an update about the lessons learned and if the capacity going forward would be similar or if we are having ideas on how we can improve this,” said Ward 6 Coun. Cynthia Block.
City manager Jeff Jorgenson assured council that a new report would be coming forward after snow removal is finished.
“We will be bringing forward a summary report to council with a summary of the program, lessons learned,” said Jorgenson. “I think at that time, if there is an interest of council looking at different options, I think there would be a really good opportunity for a discussion at that time.”
Administration said the city hopes to have completed priority and local streets by March 1, but is dealing with a shortage of trucks to handle the workload.
“It really just comes down to capacity and the amount of work that needs to be done,” said Terry Schmidt, general manager of transportation and construction. “We are seeing more snow in this event than we did in 2020.”
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