Stephen Vance, Staff
It may account for a tiny portion of the annual municipal budget, but winter sidewalk maintenance generates more than its fair share of complaints from residents.
For now though, the service level will remain as it is while the municipality awaits revisions to minimum maintenance standards from the province (there is currently no provincially mandated legislation requiring municipalities to clear sidewalks in the winter months) that might impact winter sidewalk maintenance.
The gross budget for winter sidewalk maintenance each year is $42,850, a small fraction of the $3.3 million annual transportation services budget, and the service requires the equivalent of approximately half a full time employee, or 1,000 hours per year.
The municipality currently maintains approximately 24.5 kilometres of sidewalk, with 60 percent of urban roads featuring sidewalks. Those sidewalks are divided into three service classifications – priority, secondary, and those that receive no winter maintenance.
Priority routes account for approximately 10 kilometres of Meaford’s sidewalks with a focus on the downtown business district and school areas.
Secondary routes include another 10.5 kilometres of sidewalks that branch off of priority routes. Snow removal on secondary routes begins once the priority routes have been completed.
The final 4.4 kilometres of sidewalks are not provided with winter maintenance at all, as the sidewalks are deemed too narrow for effective clearing or are not connected as part of the sidewalk network.
Though Chapman presented four options to council regarding winter sidewalk maintenance, staff recommended that no action be taken until the province has established revised minimum maintenance standards, which could include sidewalk maintenance which is currently not a mandatory service for municipalities to provide. Chapman noted that many municipalities such as Orillia do not clear sidewalks in winter and instead have established bylaws requiring property owners to clear sidewalks.
While council will wait and see what revisions to mandatory minimum service levels are made by the province, one councillor suggested that winter sidewalk maintenance is one area of the extensive municipal service delivery review that could benefit from enhanced, not reduced service.
“Winter maintenance of sidewalks is 1.43 percent of the winter control budget which makes it a wee bit of the entire municipal budget, and I’m betting it’s probably gotten the most complaints,” suggested Councillor Mike Poetker. “I think option four (which would provide additional staff and equipment to perform winter maintenance on all primary and secondary sidewalk sections) should be considered because we have more walkers, more students, and more elderly people, and if the province is looking into minimum maintenance standards, I’d like to be ahead of the game.”
Option four as presented to council would require additional staff at a cost of$28,500 per year and additional equipment.
“The current annualized cost of the sidewalk machine for winter control is approximately $14,400, as the balance of the cost is allocated to various summer seasonal functions performed using the sidewalk machine, including specialized grass cutting which can’t be completed by Parks staff, guide-rail maintenance (grass cutting) and intersection/sidewalk street sweeping. An additional machine would cost in excess of $25,000 annually given that it would be a single purpose machine for winter maintenance only,” Chapman noted in his report.
Council voted in favour of maintaining the status-quo for the time being, and the service could be revisited once the province has published revised minimum maintenance standards.
