The return of the community and comments section at council’s committee of the whole meeting March 21 touched on a topic that’s on the minds of many Thompsonites after a record-setting snowfall the following day: snow clearing.
“The roads are terrible,” Robert Chuckrey told councillors. “At every intersection in the city, and I mean pretty much every one other than a turn lane, you cannot see past the stop sign. I’m sure we have equipment and people qualified to move snow and it should have been done a lot sooner. My question is, when are we going to do it? After it melts or next year?”
City manager Anthony McInnis said absenteeism and self-isolation related to the omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic slowed city operations in January and February.
“The departments were quite short staffed at the time,” he said.
He also said that the city does do snow clearing in shifts when equipment operators are available.
Mayor Colleen Smook said an equipment policy that keeps some machines out of use during particularly cold weather like Thompson experienced earlier this year was also a factor.
“Some of those very cool days our equipment was not on the streets due to those policies,” she said.
Ron Matechuk told council he had never seen the roads in worse shape than this year in over 50 years as a Thompson resident, even during winters when city employees were on strike.
According to Environment Canada, 13 centimetres of snow fell in Thompson on March 22, the most for that date since records started being kept in 1968, beating the previous record by one cm.
