City could begin tracking performance of snow clearing contractors

The city may soon take a closer look at its snow removal contractors amid some neighbourhood complaints about inefficient work.

The city might start keeping a closer eye on snow clearing work done by private contractors.

A motion raised by Ward 5 Coun. Randy Donauer at its regular business meeting on Wednesday asked administration to explore monitoring the quality of work performed by snow-clearing contractors and then use the information gathered to help decide the bidding process for future contracts.

“Everybody should get a similar quality or a similar level of service, Donauer said.

“And the way I see it, we’ve done this in other areas of procurement with the city where we don’t just always look for lowest price, because sometimes you do get what you pay for.”

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Donauer said he and other councillors have seen significant problems with the quality and timeliness of snow-clearing work over the last couple of years.

He said those issues came to a head last winter after a major snowfall triggered a citywide response. As the city updated the public regularly about the progress made on its priority streets, he noticed other areas of the city being cleared quickly as progress was slow in his ward.

“Can we say if you’ve done a good job, it’ll be easier for you to get city work? And if you haven’t done a good job, it might be harder for you to get city work,” Donauer said.

Currently, snow removal contracts in Saskatoon are awarded to the least expensive bid with no monitoring done afterwards.

“So, we’re pushing not just low price, but actually, efficiency as well, so that we get a better quality of work,” Donauer said.

“Because if we just continue to take a low bid for everything, we’re not really pushing for quality and our residents are paying the price for that.”

Donauer found out the contractor for his area last year was awarded the contract again this season, despite multiple complaints and reports of damaged irrigation lines. He says some issues may persist because of companies looking to get into snow removal who operate a different business.

“I think what we saw was some operators that maybe there was a learning curve on how to do snow clearing on packed or crowded residential streets. I’m fine with the learning curve, and I’m fine with people getting up to speed. I just want to make sure we’re incentivizing that learning curve to be sharp and short so that residents get the service that they’re paying for,” he said.

Varying levels of snow clearing across the city has been noticed by the Bus Riders of Saskatoon.

The transit advocacy group says some bus stops are cleared well while others are blocked off or made difficult to navigate when plows leave large amounts of snow.

He says the Bus Riders Facebook group has been “flooded” with comments on snow removal over the last month.

“So, either there’s not a standard of how this should be done, or nobody’s monitoring this standard to see it should happen,” he said.

Clipperton said some transit users are being dropped off and having to walk over a three-foot-high windrow.

Donauer’s motion received unanimous support. There’s no timeline on when administration will report back with its findings.