Discussions

What would you like to see in improvements for snow removal?. I know we all have our own thoughts, one of mine is clearing sidewalks on major routes so people don't have to walk on the street...Kirkcaldy!! its a real mess, and certainly dangerous for pedestrians to walk on such a busy route. Ruts...another issue.

McTavish avenue between First and 10th. street is bad right now. Those ruts can take you places you don`t want to go!  
 
Otherwise the city has done a pretty good job plowing after `snowzilla` and they are working on removing piles at the intersections so that is appreciated.

Why our snow routes, which have parking bans in effect, are not being enforced nor cleared? Rosser E and Princess are disastrous messes .  
 
And why 10th st, which is such a prominent street is such a disgrace. Huge ruts and windrows preventing customers from using meters.....There are so many small businesses along there, and it is an embarrassment the state it is in. Even so far as to Neelin....what a mess, especially in front of that treatment centre. People are practically sliding into each other off the ruts .  
 
Not understanding why any residential streets were done before major routes like these. Seems to be a disconnect on priorities.  
 
Not in any way blaming the actual workers of course, this reaks of bad management and planning.  
 
Edited by foxtrot11, 2017-01-10 17:30:00

Infront of J.R.Reid during school morning rush was an absolute idiot move on someone's part. Very fortunate noone was injured.

it has been weeks since we had any measurable snow yet there are lots of streets needing to be plowed due to ruts and loose snow this would be a good time to put out signs and give streets a proper plow instead of picking random streets to remove and haul away snow

Jordynsdad said "it has been weeks since we had any measurable snow yet there are lots of streets needing to be plowed due to ruts and loose snow this would be a good time to put out signs and give streets a proper plow instead of picking random streets to remove and haul away snow "

The streets are a mess. Is the city STILL hauling snow away from the December 26th snowstorm?  
 
This warmer weather would be ideal to clear streets, wouldn't it?  
 
I wish the city would keep residents more informed on this issue. We are all on the streets everyday. Would definitely be more helpful than the 2016 Corporate Scorecard a month into 2017. http://brandon.ca/corporate-scorecard

Curious as to how much people want the city to spend on snow clearing. Everyone says how wonderful Winnipeg did cleaning after the big snow storm. We have to realize that Brandon is about 7% the size of Winnipeg. Winnipeg to do that wonderful job I heard spent about 9 million dollars. At 7% that is our whole snow clearing budget for the year on one storm. That would mean we would need to double or triple our snow budget to clear like people seem to want. Yet if our taxes go up we scream bloody murder.

Also what frustrates me about drivers in this region is the lack of sense of responsibility on their part. When we had that storm I was pushing out many people. When giving out drivers licenses I wish winter driving was mandatory. Pizza guy gets stuck. Push them out. Drives about 300 ft and stuck again. Because it is in front of my place, need to push again. Look at his tires and they are almost bald. Jesus if you want to deliver then how about some proper tires. MPI has a good budget program for winter tires to make them affordable. New driver (won't say where doesn't matter) we go to push out, get car moving he keeps slowing down and stopping instead of giving a little gas and using momentum to keep wheels turning. After complaining to the driver he finally clues in to give it gas when the car starts to move and KEEP MOVING!!!

funny how some people want the city do stuff for them or except from the city when they are not responsible on their own yard like tires on their vehicles.  
Some day the province will have a law like some province require winter tires.

The City of Brandon has a snow clearing budget. The budget is used for the snow clearing of Brandon streets. Residents are not asking for too much.  
 
Perhaps if the city was quicker to clear the streets, there would be no need for snow tires.  
 
My tax dollars go to a lot of things that I don't personally support. What I do support is a city that isn't a pig pen. This includes messy streets from slush. Wednesday night the low is -24C. The sloppy street ruts will harden like concrete. Preventative maintenance - snow clearing would prevent tax payers having to drive on and in ruts.  
 
No, not asking too much. IMO

We would not be still talking about this if they plowed to the right and not into the center of the streets. Plow to boulevards as they do in most other parts of the country. We are a small city and should not be cleaning up a month later. I have lived in many cities in snow belts with a lot more snow then this. You plow to the right and employ 4 sidewalk blowers and you are done in two days, Part of issue is plowing with graders, Od technology. Trucks with plows and wings do a street in one pass, with the ridiculous amount we pay in property taxes, we should expect a lot better service. Never in the 5 cities both east and west have I seen such a mess. I just returned from Moncton and they had city dne in 3 days. And that is heavy wet snow. Not this prairie fluff. My god sen someone from city to eastern provinces see how they do it. No wonder we spend so much in overtime. BUT+Y THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT>:

the city is hiring.  
 
https://jobbank.brandon.ca/AvantiCareerConnector/Job/Details/170004

the high taxes we pay. The "major" snow fell over a month ago, they are still clearing and hauling snow..that is poor management, that is poor direction from the City Manager. Seems like it is just a "wait for the thaw" attitude, sorry that doesn't cut it in this climate. But then again, we will have the same issue with mosquito fogging come summer.

the city, top heavy management,who can not get there act together. To get an accurate update on anything, including road clearing areas, they will need to hire a consultant or two or three on how best to do this and do a feasibility study before they will wake up and get with the times! Stuck in the dark ages.

The City Manager's salary is over $200K, if he is not capable of managing a small city like Brandon, maybe its time to reshuffle the "Old Boys Club" and get someone new in. When was the last time the City Manager walked along a sidewalk covered in snow to his knees, or drove down 9th street,(and many others) where it is down to one lane in some spots, or tried to park in front of a local business and had to climb over a snowbank just to plug the meter, when was the last time he waited for a bus in the blowing wind/snow/rain, only for it to arrive late. Time to see how we live, time to SEE what needs to be changed, and improved. The potential for a great city is there, it just needs so help.

Anyone know if the city will be clearing the streets from last night's snowfall? Priority routes AND residential streets? All, some or none?  
 
The snow clearing map on the City of Brandon website hasn't been updated since December 31, 2016. This map is about as useful as the outdated corporate scorecard still only showing inflated stats from 2016 (with 2017 data?)

the ruts on our street are really bad, I have given up hope of having any clearing done...The Spring thaw is only 6 weeks away (hopefully) I am sure that is what the city is thinking too.

fuzzy slippers said "The City Manager's salary is over $200K, if he is not capable of managing a small city like Brandon, maybe its time to reshuffle the "Old Boys Club" and get someone new in. When was the last time the City Manager walked along a sidewalk covered in snow to his knees, or drove down 9th street,(and many others) where it is down to one lane in some spots, or tried to park in front of a local business and had to climb over a snowbank just to plug the meter, when was the last time he waited for a bus in the blowing wind/snow/rain, only for it to arrive late. Time to see how we live, time to SEE what needs to be changed, and improved. The potential for a great city is there, it just needs so help. "

You do realize what street City Hall is on, right?  
 

Our snow budget is around the 600 grand mark for a year of snow clearing. People are comparing Brandon to places with 5 million plus snow budgets. Would residents be opposed to another 100, 200, or more per year in taxes to increase the snow budgets to the millions to clean streets and sidewalks?

fuzzy slippers said "the ruts on our street are really bad, I have given up hope of having any clearing done...The Spring thaw is only 6 weeks away (hopefully) I am sure that is what the city is thinking too. "

This winter is no different than any other Brandon winter so I don''t get why it seems the city is slow/slacking on clean up. Snow isn''t a new thing here.  
 
The city seems to be putting more and more on property owners: mow boulevards, alleys, frontages, shovel city sidewalks or get the angel program to volunteer to shovel, make bylaw complaints to police department to increase call numbers, to mention a few, all the while the city pats itself on the back for doing a bang up job at every turn. ?  
 
Then the city uses scare tactics about service cuts if tax payers don''t ante up. (I despise this!)  
 
The city can be proud of their 2017 budget but I''m far from impressed. At some point, they are going to have to address the fact that city salaries are not sustainable with Brandon''s small tax base!  
 
Also, agree with your Top Heavy Management at city hall post. I believe the city manager is out of touch with a lot that really goes on in this city. We want our basic needs met to a satisfactory level and then maybe the boys can start trying to keep up with the big league wheeling and dealing to put Brandon on map. Basic needs, not frivolous wants.  
 
I''ll wait for the big thaw...  
 
Edited by Hackeda, 2017-02-06 12:32:50

TEN said "East and west of the prairies may get more snow but they also get 2 or 3 cool days with snow then a thaw. You can not compare that to below zero temps and no thaw for two months. The ground never even gets frozen.   Salt does very little to help when it gets below -20 for weeks on end.   Also,you can not scrape ice with the truck mounted blades, you need graders.   Could they do better? Of course, but at what cost?   This is winter on the prairies, learn to drive according to road conditions, including some ice ruts. I've been doing it for decades and have yet to lose control over it. "

This guy gets it, people who know nothing about equipment or conditions trying to sound like experts. How much time have you spent behind the sticks?

Fishin Guy said "Our snow budget is around the 600 grand mark for a year of snow clearing. People are comparing Brandon to places with 5 million plus snow budgets. Would residents be opposed to another 100, 200, or more per year in taxes to increase the snow budgets to the millions to clean streets and sidewalks? "

could we not just redirect funds from those gawd awful boulevard flowers in the summer? They burn amazing amounts of money on those eyesores! Personally I feel a functional city all year round should be a higher priority than silly vanity projects.

Happy Trails said "    Fishin Guy said "Our snow budget is around the 600 grand mark for a year of snow clearing. People are comparing Brandon to places with 5 million plus snow budgets. Would residents be opposed to another 100, 200, or more per year in taxes to increase the snow budgets to the millions to clean streets and sidewalks? " could we not just redirect funds from those gawd awful boulevard flowers in the summer? They burn amazing amounts of money on those eyesores! Personally I feel a functional city all year round should be a higher priority than silly vanity projects. "

Please please make this guy our city manager. My goodness the stupid flowers are such a waste.  
 
To answer a little further, no they cannot defer funds because at the budget review the taxpayer money is placed inside the buckets they have set up and even though it would make sense to transfer money from one bucket to the other it is impossible. You see these buckets cannot be accessed or even discussed after budget deliberation is over. So when we have a lot of snowfall the city will get ready by increase the budget for snowfall clearing next year by increasing your taxes. Then since the flower budget was more than required they will spend the remainder of their budget on useless stuff, to justify their budget and then ask for more money because they needed all their budget this year.  
 
This BS from the city has to stop.  
 
600 thousand is the clearing budget we have? You all are comparing this to 5 million budgets elsewhere? Those budgets have 10 times the people and infrastructure too. Compare apples to apples $/square meter our city is very poor at snow clearing.  
 
The best streets in the city are cleared by the best... the province not the city.

Happy Trails said "    Fishin Guy said "Our snow budget is around the 600 grand mark for a year of snow clearing. People are comparing Brandon to places with 5 million plus snow budgets. Would residents be opposed to another 100, 200, or more per year in taxes to increase the snow budgets to the millions to clean streets and sidewalks? " could we not just redirect funds from those gawd awful boulevard flowers in the summer? They burn amazing amounts of money on those eyesores! Personally I feel a functional city all year round should be a higher priority than silly vanity projects. "

Along with the cost of watering them in the rain, mowing city grass when it hasn't rained in weeks, paying for spray parks when half the time I drive by there is a worker sitting there as nobody seems to want to use them when it isn't over 25 degrees and sunny. Sportsplex is a money pit we could ditch. How about also ditching the Christmas decorations and the waterfall of lights display too. Waste of money all around.  
 
Like another poster said....It is a different game dealing with constant melting and freezing. It isn't a simple call to the graders. You need to change blades constantly as they have a ripping blade vs just a long flat blade, which people bitch about all the time as it just leave a sheet of ice behind when they grade. Then they need to dump a bunch of sand and salt down to compensate for the now slippery sections created.  
 
As for the province doing such a wonderful job in cleaning the streets? This is the only province I know of that would shut down for days on end during a snow storm rather than have plows on the highways pushing snow.

Happy Trails said "    Fishin Guy said "Our snow budget is around the 600 grand mark for a year of snow clearing. People are comparing Brandon to places with 5 million plus snow budgets. Would residents be opposed to another 100, 200, or more per year in taxes to increase the snow budgets to the millions to clean streets and sidewalks? " could we not just redirect funds from those gawd awful boulevard flowers in the summer? They burn amazing amounts of money on those eyesores! Personally I feel a functional city all year round should be a higher priority than silly vanity projects. "

I think there is other places where the city could save money, for example in the last budget planning a new position is wanted for the community development department to the tune of 72 grand a year. The job is something to do with sports and recreation for the community centres. Is the job needed? That's a lot of cash and I know a lot of people that put in a hard day's work and barely get half that salary.

Johnbisonbear said "    Happy Trails said "    Fishin Guy said "Our snow budget is around the 600 grand mark for a year of snow clearing. People are comparing Brandon to places with 5 million plus snow budgets. Would residents be opposed to another 100, 200, or more per year in taxes to increase the snow budgets to the millions to clean streets and sidewalks? " could we not just redirect funds from those gawd awful boulevard flowers in the summer? They burn amazing amounts of money on those eyesores! Personally I feel a functional city all year round should be a higher priority than silly vanity projects. " I think there is other places where the city could save money, for example in the last budget planning a new position is wanted for the community development department to the tune of 72 grand a year. The job is something to do with sports and recreation for the community centres. Is the job needed? That's a lot of cash and I know a lot of people that put in a hard day's work and barely get half that salary. "

It was brutal watching the deliberations. Some council did ask some good questions but in the end it's all a 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' game. Trouble is, they're playing with our real money. The city needs to stop creating "needed" positions. They begin by camouflaging a full-time permanent, unionized (or mgmt.) position as a temporary/contract, one year term position but it never goes away which is what will happen with this community centre manager position. Council oks the term position only to have the city manager then make up justifications to keep the position after the term is up and make it permanent. Someone has to reign that guy in. Businesses in the real world don't create positions that the business can't afford to fund. The city manager just keeps his hand out to us taxpayers. He needs to learn to scale back his wants.  
 
Like Happy Trails said, we need a functional city all year round and it should be a higher priority than vanity projects and I'll add, all those feel-good projects!  
 
I really do like seeing the flowers around but I could live without them if it meant my street gets cleared more than once a winter or if it meant a reduction in property taxes.  
 
Speaking of functional vs. vanity, the street sweeper/washer was on our street THREE separate times in a short period of time last summer alone! My neighbours and I couldn't figure out what they were cleaning! The streets were clean! Normally, we see sweepers once in spring and once later on in the season.  
 
Just imagine how many flowers we could plant for $72k!  
 
I vote for the city of Brandon to have year-round functionality!

i wonder how much is spent on actually plowing the streets which usually takes 1 plow and 1 loader working together and how much is spent hauling away snow which looks like it takes a plow a couple of loaders a tractor and several trucks to haul it all away and if they really need to remove snow from some streets like Queens crescent which seems like an ordinary residential street and could they have maybe removed snow off of Victoria East and 26th in the evening or overnight when traffic was light instead of the morning and afternoon it seemed like they were doing Victoria East for 4 or 5 days because traffic was heavy during the days they were doing it

Vic east is a provincial route not the city of Brandons problem.

Provincial road stops at 1st then it becomes city responsibility. The roads are still crap. Drive Mc Tavish between 18th and 26th especially during busy school times. Many accidents could happen there if people didn't take care.  
 
The major problem is management. They do not coordinate the workers in an effective manner, follow that with the city perception about equipment. They at one time had a few graders( now down to 2)and they did have trucks with plows on them.The city has since grown. Got rid of it all as the snowfall amounts did not merit keeping them. Backwards thinking in my opinion, this is Manitoba after all!

This happens every year...EVERY YEAR...like what's changed that has everyones panties in a knot? You don't like your taxes? they're too high you say? print off this post, all 4 pages of it and read it EVERY TIME you decide to cry about how expensive Brandon is.