Winter Maintenance Review Underway

The City of St. John’s winter maintenance review has kicked in to high gear with consultants KPMG undertaking a series of stakeholder meetings and community dialogues next week.

The review covers a variety of aspects of the City’s winter maintenance operations and will determine where current service levels, resource and budgetary allocations or practices may differ from “state of the industry” as determined through a thorough jurisdictional review and make recommendations.

“Our goal with this review is to identify what is working well, where the challenges are, and where we need to make adjustments,” said Jonathan Galgay, Chair of the City’s Public Working Standing Committee. “This review will use public and stakeholder input as well as comparisons to other jurisdictions to determine the best approach for the City of St. John’s.”

The consultant will meet with key stakeholders for this project including Downtown St. John’s, The NL English School District, Metrobus, George Street Association, Canada Post as well as tap into existing work undertaken by Happy City. Additionally, information gathered through the survey component of the City’s current traffic study review at Memorial University will also be used.

Community dialogues on winter maintenance will take place:
7 p.m., Tuesday, June 24, MacDonald Drive Junior High, entrance off Toronto Street
7 p.m., Thursday, June 26, Southlands Community Centre, entrance off Teakwood Drive

Citizens will also have an opportunity to provide comments and ideas through a public website at www.snowsj.com (under construction, should be live June 19) and through email at snow@kpmg.ca. The City will be using the hashtag #snowsj at the sessions, and throughout the review process, on Twitter and Facebook.

The consultants will also be meeting with key internal stakeholder, including the staff who currently provide snow clearing services, for their experiences and ideas.

Operational components being considered include:

• Resource allocations (budget, equipment, personnel and materials)
• Levels of service, priority and policy issues
• Composition of snow clearing fleet for both roads and sidewalk clearing programs
• Staff training needs
• Fleet maintenance
• Schedules and shifts for all staff
• Number and location of maintenance depots
• Optional snow dumping areas
• Consideration of the optimal mix of in-house and contracted services
• Sidewalk snow-clearing program

The KPMG team has experience in conducting reviews of winter maintenance operations. They are part of KPMG’s Municipalities Group a global network of professional firms providing a variety of services to municipalities.