Prince George city council directed city staff to investigate reducing snow-clearing services on statutory holidays to reduce overtime costs at its Monday, Feb. 24 meeting.
Heading into the meeting, city staff prepared a report saying that Prince George spent at least $10.6 million on snow control in 2024, more than the $1.3 million that was budgeted for.
Mayor Simon Yu said he recently attended a Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting in Fredericton, passing through Toronto and Montreal along the way. He said that experience reminded him that Prince George has “world class” snow removal.
Bringing up the $300,000 deficit Prince George ran in its snow control budget in 2024, Yu asked if it was a case that with climate change, one large snow dump could be more expensive than smaller, sustained amounts of snowfall.
Director of civic operations Blake McIntosh said it’s important to recognize that Prince George has certain fixed costs like staffing for the five or six months a year that snow falls.
Materials like salt and calcium used for ice control are also fixed. These costs make up about 50 per cent of the total budget.
If snow falls on a statutory holiday, that can increase costs, as well as the total amount of snow that falls.
After council passed a 2025 budget with a reduction to the snow control costs from the $10.3 million budgeted in 2024 to $10 million, Yu asked director of finance and IT services Kris Dalio whether that poses an issue.
Dalio said sometimes council gambles with snow control and comes out on top, in other years like 2020, both the budget and the reserve were blown through and required the city to dip into the operational surplus.
Coun. Cori Ramsay put forward a motion to extend the snow-clearing deadline for 24 hours for snow events that start on statutory holidays. She said that could save money spent on overtime costs for snow clearing on those days.
While the city prides itself on good snow removal services, she said a deficit in this category would be carried forward to next year and as chair of the Standing Committee on Audit and Finance, she doesn’t want to see that.
Should the change in policy not work out, it could be changed.
A report presented at an October 2024 council meeting said that savings from doing so for all four winter statutory holidays would be $864,004.
The mayor asked if reducing overtime like this would cause any problems with collective agreements with its staff that handle snow control.
City manager Walter Babicz suggested that staff be directed to return to a future meeting with wording that carries out council’s intent without running into any issues with collective bargaining or other factors.
Council gave unanimous consent to amending Ramsay’s motion to incorporate that suggestion.
McIntosh asked that staff be allowed to investigate potential issues with reducing holiday snow clearing like preventing the city from shutting down completely under particularly hard snowfall.
He also said the city has to be careful of allowing snow to compact, which makes it harder to plow.
Ramsay’s motion passed unanimously.
Coun. Trudy Klassen noted that public feedback to the 2024 deficit expressed overwhelming surprise over how the city had spent that much money. She suggested it might be worthwhile to produce a detailed report on how snow control money was spent last year.
Coun. Kyle Sampson said he was disappointed that council didn’t have any more ideas on how to reduce snow control costs. He voted against the budget reduction during deliberations and said he had been hopeful those in support of the cut would have brought forward more ideas.
Coun. Tim Bennett said he was surprised to see plows out on his street earlier that day given that it hasn’t snowed in several days. He said it might be worth providing more clarity on why plows are deploying in these situations.
McIntosh said crews have been out to open up catch basins and drains to deal with melting snow. Not dealing with these water issues can pose their own risks and expenses down the line.
Additionally, he said, there were significant calls about “gigantic lakes and puddles” last weekend.
