To: Honorable Mayor and Members of Town Council
From: Dan Sailer, P.E., Public Works Assistant Director
Title
Discussion/Direction: Snow and Ice Control Program
Body
________________________________________________________________________________
Executive Summary
The Snowplowing and Ice Control Policy was adopted by Town Council in November 2008. The primary goal of the policy is to provide snow and ice control services to all Town owned public streets in an effort to facilitate emergency service access and vehicular movement throughout the community. The purpose of this item is to review the major points of the current policy to understand if policy goals are still appropriate. In addition, Town Council feedback related to increasing productivity levels in the ice control area as part of the 2017 budget is also being sought.
Plowing streets and applying ice control agents supports the Town goal of maintaining safe, functional and accessible infrastructure in a proactive manner. In the days following a snow event when freeze-thaw cycles warrant, ice abatement techniques are used to crush and plow ice as needed for safety.
The following graphic shows the general policy thresholds utilized to determine when snowplowing operations are commenced. The scale on the left is forecasted snow accumulation in inches.
Secondary streets (Priorities 3 and 4) may or may not be plowed when snow and ice control operations are initiated for primary streets. The criteria to initiate snowplowing on secondary streets involve a determination of whether the streets will be passable for vehicles based on the existing storm event. The Department’s goal is to complete this within eight (8) hours after snowfall has ceased. Temperatures and time of year will also be considered. No more snow will be plowed than is necessary to maintain two-way traffic.
A team of more than 70 staff from the Public Works, Utilities and Parks & Recreation Departments are trained each year to respond to storm events. Approximately 16 Public Works staff will be used for a “typical” storm event. This additional staff allows for multiple shifts in the case of a blizzard or when “around-the-clock” operations are implemented. During around-the-clock operations with enhanced residential plowing as many as 48 staff are typically utilized.
Budget Impact
All items inclusive to snow plowing operations are included in the Public Works Department budget to maintain current levels of service (8-hours, 90% of time). While overall feedback from the most recent community survey indicates that the community is pleased with the current program service levels, recent individual calls relate to requests for increased ice control productivity.
The Department is currently working to define a service level for ice control operations. Current productivity averages 1,230 person-hours a year in this area. We could double this to 2,460 person-hours a year using one of two options: 1) contracted services and a new ice-breaker, or 2) adding three new employees, a new ice-breaker, and equipment rental. Total estimated cost increase for the first year is approximately $263,000 for option #1 and $266,000 for option #2. The annual average cost over the next four years for option #1 is $224,000 and for option #2 is $250,000. This includes eliminating three seasonal employee positions with option #2 that would be replaced with these full time employees.
Staff Recommendation
According to the latest community survey data, the current policy is meeting the needs of the community in an efficient and cost effective manner. Public Works staff is recommending that the current policy remain in effect. This item was reviewed with the Public Works Commission and Town Council in the Fall of 2015. Town Council recommended making no changes to the program at that time.
Feedback from the most recent snow and ice season has been a fairly typical mixture of positive and negative feedback. While overall individual feedback has been a very small portion of the overall population, the negative feedback has been primarily focused on the ice control area. Staff is seeking feedback from Town Council whether to increase productivity levels in this area as part of the 2017 budget preparation. Based on the fairly comparable costs between contracting out this increased productivity and employee three full time employees Staff recommends hiring full time employees. This option brings the added benefit of being able to use the remaining available labor-hours (approximately 2,370 on average a year) for other program areas.
Proposed Motion
This agenda item is for information and feedback purposes only.
Attachments
Staff Report
Attachment A: Snowplowing and Ice Control Policy