{"id":34905,"date":"2024-08-08T16:18:05","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T20:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=34905"},"modified":"2024-08-15T12:59:48","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T16:59:48","slug":"aurora-boosts-sidewalk-maintenance-ahead-of-winter-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-boosts-sidewalk-maintenance-ahead-of-winter-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora boosts sidewalk maintenance ahead of winter season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many people don\u2019t like to think about the winter ahead in the heat of summer, but local lawmakers are looking ahead to sidewalk maintenance in the year ahead once the snow starts to fly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council has approved new service standards for winter sidewalk maintenance, increasing the number of snow clearing and maintenance routes from eight to 10 for the upcoming season, and re-allocating existing stretches to the two new routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough the road and sidewalk network has grown by 25 per cent over the last decade, the number of sidewalk machines or routes has not been updated,\u201d said the Town in a statement, following the last Council meeting before the summer recess. \u201cA review shows that Aurora\u2019s sidewalk routes are longer than those in other regional municipalities. This new plan will reduce each route to approximately 25 kilometres, allowing established service levels to be met. This change will add $120,000 to the budget to cover the increased contract.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a report to Council by Luigi Colangelo, Aurora\u2019s Manager of Public Works, the Town currently maintains more than 250 kilometres of sidewalks, walkways and pathways, all of which were divided into eight routes. Seven of the routes were maintained solely by the Town\u2019s contractor and the balance by Town staff and equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAurora\u2019s approved service levels for sidewalks and multi-use pathways for winter maintenance is to plow all sidewalks within 24 hours of the end of a snowfall when accumulations reach 5 cm or more,\u201d he said. \u201cThis currently exceeds the requirements in the MMS (Minimum Maintenance Standard) which states that snow depths on sidewalks must be reduced to less than 8 cm within 48 hours. The level of service targets approved by Council in 2014 are key defence tools in protecting the Town from claims related to winter sidewalk operations. Road and sidewalk winter management are high-risk areas of operation for the Town. These risks are primarily related to personal injury claims\u2026. To manage the Town\u2019s risk, it\u2019s important to \u2018say what you will do and what you will say.\u2019 When responding to a personal injury claim, one key defence is that the Town has clear and supportable policies and stated service levels in place and that those policies are being delivered to the service level targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn average, the Town experiences 45 to 50 winter maintenance events each season which require sidewalk plowing and salting. During an event, contracted staff are dispatched and must return the next day for additional cleanup\u2026. [In recent years] the Town\u2019s contractor has encountered numerous challenges in adhering to Council-approved service levels of plowing all sidewalks within 24 hours. The expanded and lengthy sidewalk routes have proven difficult to cover and excessively time-consuming within the designated timeframe\u2026. Despite these obstacles, efforts are ongoing to optimize operations to meet Council-approved service levels but continuing to operate in this manner, without additional sidewalk machines going forward, will prove problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is this an issue that needs to be resolved by the Town, or is it the responsibility of the contractor to find ways to meet these service levels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a question posed to staff by Ward 5 Councillor John Gallo at the most recent meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a contract with someone, they know the routes, they know our service level. Why does it matter to us if they are having difficulty? The responsibility is theirs to fulfil their obligation on those routes at the prescribed level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sara Tienkamp, Aurora\u2019s Director of Operational Services, replied that contracted employees are only allowed to drive 13 hours a day per labour laws and those parameters restrict options. There is, she said, also the issue of equipment breakdowns and staffing issues which may not be able to be countered by the Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have some difficulty in that,\u201d replied Councillor Gallo. \u201cWe have a contract with someone, we pay them, they know how many kilometres they have to do, they know what the service level is, and it\u2019s incumbent upon them to have the proper resources in order to fulfil their contractual obligations with us. It shouldn\u2019t be upon us to solve their problems. If it is our staff and we\u2019re trying to deal with more kilometres that our staff have to do, and they can\u2019t work for whatever reason, it\u2019s our responsibility to figure those out. When we have a contract with someone, that\u2019s what we pay for. This is within the contract. These are the obligations you have to find. It\u2019s not incumbent upon us to figure out solutions to their problem and I feel that\u2019s kind of what we\u2019re doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additional perspective was offered by Town CAO Doug Nadorozny who said another layer of the matter is, per the original contract, contractors secure or purchase equipment to meet demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is an equipment component that would have to be factored in as well as we take on subdivisions,\u201d said Nadorozny. \u201cIf we keep the number of kilometres per route the same, we have to have the equipment that wouldn\u2019t have been in the original contract.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The change nonetheless won the support of Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many people don\u2019t like to think about the winter ahead in the heat of summer, but local lawmakers are looking ahead to sidewalk maintenance in the year ahead once the snow starts to fly. Council has approved new service standards for winter sidewalk maintenance, increasing the number of snow clearing and maintenance routes from eight […]<\/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-34905","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\/p3D2k4-94Z","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 11:13:44","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\/34905","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=34905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}