As icebergs begin to thaw across the city, Council heaps praise towards recent snow efforts

Some of the leftovers of our recent weather can be found in frozen
piles of snow and sand across the city, here in front of City Hall

Mother Nature has been lending a hand this week to city works crews in helping to remove some of the accumulated snow and ice we have seen in recent weeks, which only seems fair since she delivered the volume of snow during that period.

Warming temperatures and sunny skies in recent days have served to start to melt away the large piles of snow that have been placed around the city during snow removal efforts.

Third Avenue in particular having become somewhat of an iceberg alley of late.

Though the burden of snow hills was shared around the downtown area and into residential neighbourhoods.

How the city coped with the recent few weeks of unusually snowy and cold weather made for the current of some conversation at Monday's City Council session.

Council members used the final few minutes of the Monday session to share their thoughts on the work of City crews as they tackled the day after day fall of snow.

The first mention of the snow came by way of a question from Councillor Barry Cunningham who asked towards how many notices were handed out when it came to property owner responsibilities.

"I would like to know how many notices were handed out for people not clearing their snow"

In reply, Corporate Administrator Rosa Miller observed she would have to confirm with Bylaw towards a number, though noting that the City had delivered notices to every single business in Prince Rupert related to the issue of No Snow removal.

The Councillor followed up with some observations of the recent weeks.

"Ok, because I've brought it up at several council meetings  and I notice certain areas that I brought up  weren't cleared at all, they're still not cleared"

A few minutes later Councillor Nick Adey began a what became an avalanche of salutes to the work of city crews.

"A shout out to the city workers for the work they did do on the snow removal, I was really happy to see, I don't know why I spend so much time in Facebook, but there I am looking at these comment threads and there was actually a comment thread that was overwhelmingly positive this time. So I think full credit to city workers for the job they did  on an extended bout of snow that we all hope is going away soon"

Mayor Pond then called on the City's Corporate Administrator to provide an overview on those efforts, towards that Ms. Rosa Miller provided a snapshot of the work.

"On Monday which I believe we referred to Snowmageddon before Slushmageddon. We had all hands on deck, staff who do not work in Public Works as a regular part of their job were more than happy to go out and shovel and move snow and try and get people out and do walkways and sidewalks and what not. And certainly there is a lot more to do, but they've really all pulled together and did a fantastic job"

Councillor Randhawa also joined in on the chorus of bouquets for the city workers, as did Councillor Wade Niesh, he observed on the work of both the city and contracted workers.

"As far as the snow removal goes, I did see a lot more positive comments this time, people were a lot happier in comparison to say last winter when we had our two weeks of snow and how it was dealt with. And I think that having the contractors right away this time, was a big benefit to kind of getting us more opened up quicker.  And you know you'll never keep everyone happy,  there's always somebody who's unhappy, but generally I think most people were happy with how it went down this time versus Christmas time last year"

Councillor Skelton-Morven also had positive words offering a shout out to the city workers and an observation that he made it through the Grocery stores unscathed during the recent snow period.

You can review the discussion from Council members from the City's Video archive starting at the 22 minute mark of the Monday session.

While they provided for their salutes to the work of the civic workforce, there was no discussion or enquiries made by the Council members towards how much the extensive snow removal work related to the city's snow budget. 

Nor if the extended period of snow provided for equipment issues or other challenges for the city's operations department. 

More notes on Monday's Council Session can be explored here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review.