No snow means City of Kamloops streets crews stay busy elsewhere

KAMLOOPS — The last few months of 2023 have brought us one of the milder winters in memory, thus far. That means city streets crews have had a reprieve from traditional snow and ice mitigation work.

However, that doesn’t mean those crews haven’t been busy with other work. With very little snow-clearing and minimal ice control work for those crews to do, they’ve been able to tackle other work, like patching and sweeping.

“It’s been a great blessing for us to continue patching and sweeping. We even swept in early December, as well,” City of Kamloops Streets and Environmental Services Manager Glen Farrow explains. “A lot of questions arise from it, but sweeping definitely helps remove a lot of leaves and debris. Anything more we sweep up now, the less we’ll have to do during the big spring cleanup.”

While the roads around the city remain relatively clear of snow and ice, that doesn’t mean the city isn’t prepared for that possibility. The city continues to run three shifts in anticipation of any possible winter weather.

“It’s less about budget, more about service levels,” Farrow explains. “We have our service levels in place, approved by council, so if it were to snow every day for three months straight, we would exceed our budget. That is normal in order to achieve those service levels we have in place.”

It’s important to remember that the snow removal budget runs from January 1 to December 31 of any given year. Even without any major snow removal work to do right now, Farrow wants to remind citizens that the overall snow removal budget falls within the umbrella of the streets budget.

“When we look at snow and ice control dollars, we spent quite a few hundred thousand dollars back in January, February and March of 2023. There is enough budget there, but if I look a the whole wrap-up of the complete streets budget, we’re going to be very close to what we normally [spend], and that’s around that $5 million mark for all street operations.”