Some Saint John residents say they have gone weeks without seeing a snowplow and they’re tired of waiting.
“It’s hard to get around…there was one day here it was blocked off for two days, big drift across the road and the plow couldn’t get through it, so we never had no plow here a couple days,” says resident Kevin McCluskey.
City councillors say they have received numerous complaints from people living on priority 3 and priority 4 streets in the city. Coun. Ray Strowbridge brought forth a motion in council Monday evening to see if anything can be done to get plows on those streets faster.
“My motion was turned into a referral motion, which means there was no discussion on it, no issues were raised, there was no direction given to staff on any changes that council may or may not have supported,” says Strowbridge.
Coun. Donna Reardon says she voted in favour of referring the motion because she wants more information first.
“I want staff’s opinion on it as well. I want to know what they think the problems are,” says Reardon. “They’re in the trenches. They work there. I have no background in plowing or in city managing so I wanted to get staff’s opinion on that.”
Coun. David Merrithew says if the solution is for the city to get more plows, then the decision needs to be made sooner rather than later.
“Do we have equipment failure? Do we need more? If that’s the case, we’re just about to close on our capital budgets,” says Merrithew. “That’s important so if we need more equipment it should be in the capital budgets.”
When a motion is referred, there is usually no timeline as to when it will be brought back up at council, but Strowbridge says city staff will be presenting a report at the next council meeting.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Ashley Blackford
