{"id":22878,"date":"2019-02-01T11:53:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T16:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=22878"},"modified":"2019-02-01T11:53:39","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T16:53:39","slug":"aurora-should-have-referendum-on-windrow-clearing-says-councillor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-should-have-referendum-on-windrow-clearing-says-councillor\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora should have referendum on windrow clearing, says Councillor"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clearing windrows, the pesky ridge of snow and ice that accumulates at the end of your freshly shovelled driveway after a plow goes by, can be an aggravating business, but Aurorans should be asked if they want to pay the price for making them a thing of the past.
\nThis was the view Councillor Wendy Gaertner presented last week after Council accepted the recommendation of staff to put a potential windrow clearing program on ice.
\nAs The Auroran reported earlier this month, Council was due to consider the implementation of a windrow clearing program. In compiling their report to local lawmakers, municipal staff recommended against the move, estimating a town-wide program impacting the 18,000 private driveways in Aurora could cost taxpayers an extra $1.5 million, a cost that did not include the purchasing of new snow removal equipment to make it all possible.
\nAlthough Councillors argued this would break down to a tax impact of $70 – $80 per average household, most agreed that the program would prove to be not only too costly, but also impractical as windrow clearing programs in other municipalities can only clear windrows in a time window between 16 and 20 hours after a snowfall.
\n\u201cMaybe we just need to do a referendum on this for next year,\u201d said Councillor Gaertner. \u201cI think the public needs to be educated as to why Council may, after so much time and research, not make the decision to help them with the windrows.\u201d
\nEducation and communications were the emerging themes when Council tackled the topic last week, with Councillor Michael Thompson stating that whether or not Aurora chose to proceed with a windrow program, managing the expectations of the public was essential.
\n\u201cMost of the conversation has been around the cost [and] while cost is certainly a factor, I think the expectations of the public is even more so,\u201d he said.
\nLooking at a report produced by the City of Vaughan, Councillor Thompson said it showed that the introduction of a windrow clearing program had created \u201ca high level of service expectation\u201d that resulted in \u201ca marked increase in the number of complaints received.\u201d
\nWindrow-clearing blades attached to snow plows, the report went on to note, had been found to cause damage to residential frontages, including landscaping, culverts and driveways themselves, while also having a negative impact on waste pickup.
\n\u201cAbsolutely the cost is a factor, and so too is the expectation,\u201d he continued. \u201cPart of it is driven by the fact that in some of these communities that do it, it is a 16 hour window and that drives a lot of the complaint process. I am glad that the recommendation is not to proceed, but I certainly think that while some of the conversations [have been] around the cost\u2026 it should also be about the service levels.\u201d
\nCouncillor Gaertner agreed that the program has its challenges, and if Council decided not to proceed, communications had to make it very clear as to why it wasn\u2019t going forward.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s really not that much money on the tax bill,\u201d she said.
\nShe had some pause, however, when Al Downey, Director of Operations, was asked whether the 18,000 driveway figure outlined in the report included driveways shared by residents in condominiums and apartments. Those residences were not included, he said, but the taxpayers living in those kinds of units, would be paying the same tax increase for windrow clearing even if they weren\u2019t able to enjoy the service.
\n\u201cIt would be very difficult to separate residences from condo owners from the residential tax,\u201d agreed CAO Doug Nadorozny. \u201cWe would have to create an area-specific charge. It would pretty much be impossible to separate that charge for just people that have the regular private residence from condo owners.\u201d
\nCouncillor Sandra Humfryes, on the other hand, said she hoped the issue wasn\u2019t dead and could be revisited by Council for implementation in a future year \u2013 even as a pilot project \u2013 when budget talks resume in February.
\n\u201cIt looks a little cost prohibitive, [but] in the large picture, the $1.5 million across residents may not be so much,\u201d she said. \u201cBut, I think we should learn from other municipalities. I know the City of Toronto used to do it years ago. I would love to have perhaps a trial pilot that we can talk about\u2026during the budget discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clearing windrows, the pesky ridge of snow and ice that accumulates at the end of your freshly shovelled driveway after a plow goes by, can be an aggravating business, but Aurorans should be asked if they want to pay the price for making them a thing of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5X0","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 00:44:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}