It’s no secret that the snow storms in late February have overwhelmed public works crews, private plow operators, and area residents.
A number of readers have messaged BayToday expressing their concern with the sidewalks and streets still not being cleared.
City bus stops have also been a problem, (see photo gallery)
One resident sent photos and described the challenge of getting through the sidewalks in front of the LCBO to the lights beside the McKeown Gas Bar.
“There have been a lot of people who are very upset because the grocery stores and pharmacy and other local businesses are practically inaccessible for people with strollers, walkers and older people with little mobility,” stated Amanda Syvret in an email to BayToday.ca.
City officials have admitted trying to catch up to the heavy snow has been a challenge to remove snow from area streets and even sidewalks.
“The condition of sidewalks around the city is not very good, we admit and realize that,” Tanya Vrebosch Chair of Engineering, Public Works and Environmental Services, stated on her FaceBook page on Thursday afternoon.
“In almost every area it has been necessary to attach blowers in order to clear. We do not have enough blowers for each trackless so this process has been slow but unavoidable considering the amount of drifting that took place.”
Meantime, some residents in the Main Street West area were concerned that their streets still had huge snowbanks while nearby, where a movie was being filmed, the streets had the snow removed.
Vrebosch has an explanation for that.
“We committed to and are being compensated to remove banks for the film production,” stated Vrebosch.
“This commitment was made well in advance of the high banks and excess snow and at a time when we felt it could operationally be completed. We have told the production companies that we will not take any further requests as we have to deal with our own snow removal going forward. The commitments have been minor and are taking limited resources and times to complete.”
On the bright side, Vrebosch believes this cold spell with no snowfall is allowing city crews to get caught up with sidewalk and snow removal cleanup.
“We expect that by the weekend we will be in far better shape. Thank you for your patience,” Vrebosch concluded.
