After winter of ice-caked sidewalks, Saint John staff ask for more snow-clearing money

Nipun Tiwari · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 25, 2025 8:45 AM EDT | Last Updated: 5 minutes ago

After a hard winter, unit with the City of Saint John asked assembly Monday nighttime to see a larger fund and amended resources for cleaning up aft storms.

Some of the six snowstorms this wintertime near metropolis sidewalks caked successful crystal and snowfall for days and successful immoderate places weeks and made getting around hard for pedestrians.

These tempest included 1 that began Christmas Eve and 1 successful February, which brought crystal pellets arsenic well.

A unit study says lone 50 to 60 per cent of the city's 11 sidewalk plows, and sometimes arsenic fewer arsenic 25 per cent, were available.

Public works manager Tim O'Reilly said the metropolis was capable to enactment connected apical of astir of its street-cleaning efforts, but it struggled with sidewalk plowing due to the fact that of aging instrumentality and parked cars. 

Nine retired of the city's 11 sidewalk plows are astatine slightest 9 years old, a unit study says, and lone 1 plow has been replaced successful the past 5 years. The usual lifespan of this instrumentality is astir 12 years. 

"It's OK to person a mates of your instrumentality towards the extremity of its utile life," O'Reilly said. "But having that galore surely led to what happened this past wintertime successful presumption of having truthful galore that were down."

With nary contingency plans to code the deficiency of equipment, sidewalk clearing was importantly delayed.

"So successful 5 of the six storms, pedestrians were delayed from utilizing astatine slightest 65 kilometres of sidewalk longer than what our work standards telephone for," O'Reilly said. 

The proviso of brackish utilized for melting crystal connected sidewalks was besides an contented arsenic the play went on.

Coun. Gary Sullivan expressed interest astir approving fund increases for wintertime resources, saying council-approved fund increases tin heap up passim the year. 

"It comes fund time, and determination are each these assembly motions that person passed connected fund increases, and either it's a large takeaway [from] determination other oregon it ends up being a taxation hike," helium said.

Ultimately, councillors voted to "investigate resources," meaning the proposal volition beryllium considered with different metropolis fund needs, but it they made nary commitment to raising the snow-clearing budget.

"It's the citizens' wealth and we person to beryllium liable for it," Sullivan said. 

To promote radical to determination vehicles earlier plowing periods, the metropolis is besides exploring substantially higher summons fines and towing illegally parked cars that interfered with snowfall plowing.

Normally, erstwhile the metropolis plans to wide definite streets aft a snowfall, it volition nonstop retired notices done email and connected its website, redirecting radical to alternate parking locations for the night.

The unit study says the metropolis volition beryllium utilizing a street-by-street attack successful the coming season, and parking volition beryllium banned connected idiosyncratic streets during the day.  

Vehicles are ticketed erstwhile they are parked during parking bans related to snow-clearing. The good is typically $30, O'Reilly said, and parking enforcement officers tin summons 80 to 100 vehicles during a parking ban, helium said. 

"The fines are OK, but it doesn't assistance america get the thoroughfare cleared erstwhile we request to get it cleared," helium said. 

More circumstantial recommendations volition beryllium brought backmost aboriginal this year.  

Sullivan said assembly volition commencement considering 2026 fund issues successful May.