It was a shopper’s triathlon of sorts.
The first event – edging the vehicle over to a well-positioned stop in thick snow. The second challenge – opening the passenger door against frozen mounds. The third event – clambering over a snowy dune, footwear intact, to get to the sidewalk.
Consequently, several downtown businesses along Lakeshore Road are disappointed with the city’s response to the recent snowfall.
Jacalyne Hays of Bella Interiors said potential shoppers would take one look at the street and decide not to stop.
“People just really complain, and a lot of elderly people can’t get the door open and then have to step into a huge pile of snow.”
She said this recent experience is part of an ongoing problem with snow removal downtown. She also expressed her frustration at the requirement for business owners to have the sidewalks clear by 10, but then a plow comes along and, instead of removing the snow, pushes it back onto the sidewalk.
Rozanna Newman of Factor 3 voiced a similar concern.
“I ran some errands at noon and I was watching people... People couldn’t get their car doors open on the passenger side and then were trying to climb over the snow. It does make it a little difficult to shop downtown if you can’t get out of your car.”
Faye Smith of Shoes N Such concurs.
“I think it’s appalling. Why wasn’t it removed on Sunday night when the streets were empty?” she said. “If you want your downtown to be viable, you want people to be able to park there and get out of their vehicles.”
Rose Malischewski of Gondwana Gallery noticed people Monday “leaping over the snowbanks from their parked cars.” Regarding removal of the snow, she said, “I was shocked on Monday morning they hadn’t done it Sunday night.”
Robert Niewenhuizen, the city’s acting director of engineering and public works, said Tuesday that Salmon Arm’s 240 kilometres of roads are listed in 15 different priority levels in terms of snow clearing. First level are arterial and collector roads including 30th Street, Okanagan Avenue, as well as roads to Gleneden and in Canoe.
Second priority is the downtown core, which the city tries to do without hauling out snow. Each time snow is hauled out, the cost is $10,000 to $12,000, Niewenhuizen said.
“With the downtown core, it was a matter of managing manpower and sending it back to deal with the snow piling up... In this particular event, we were still dealing with other priorities,” he said, Canoe in particular. He noted that if it’s going to snow for three or four days, city workers know the snow will have to be hauled away for storage. If it’s a one-time snowfall, “we’ll push it off for a while and then deal with it after that.”
He also noted that residential streets are not cleared on weekends but have to be left to Monday or Tuesday when regular staff are working. On-call staff go out on weekends, but only for the top priority areas.
Regarding the snow budget, he said that while the tail end of 2011 required little snow removal, a lot of snow fell early in the year. Similarly, the 2012 budget must cover snow clearing for both the current period as well as the end of this year.
Niewenhuizen noted that every snow event has a different severity, and the response remains a judgement call. Maybe the call should have been to haul out snow sooner, he remarked, "but I think it was based on staffing and manpower. The downtown core does have a high priority."
“I don’t want them to get the impression we’re forgetting about them,” he said of downtown merchants, noting arterial roads have to be kept open for emergency crews.