While the Kosovites (is that what they are now?) taste their new freedom today, our street is also being liberated. A city crew has come to remove the snow piles on our curbs. We lost a few parking spots to these hills. My neighbours and I say to each other, Where are we going to put it all if another snowfall comes?
The more immediate question is, where is the City going to put it all? For now, in front of our house. Here's the view from our front porch, looking across the street. That's our car in the foreground, still covered in snow.
Early this morning, the City crew knocked on doors to get people who are parked on the street to move their cars. The snow they dump in the middle of the street spills over onto the sidewalk.
Here's The Boy climbing the snow hill when he thought I wasn't looking.
Here comes the plow down our street.'
Here is the crew getting ready for a break.
When they have piled the snow high enough, new trucks comes in - a lifter and a carrier. The lifter scoops the snow from the pile, travels over to the carrier, and dumps the scoop of snow in.
When the green carrier is full, it drives away and another comes to take its place. All these years in the City, I've never seen a snow removal operation.
Apparently, this year's snow accumulation is close to the amount of snow we received in 1999, when Mayor Mel called in the Canadian army. This has certainly been the snowiest year since 1999. This clean up is costing the City about $25 million. Our annual snow removal budget is $65 million. We get about 125 cm of snow each year. Compared that to Montreal, a smaller city, which has a snow removal budget of $128 million. But then they get about 225 cm of snow a year.
In years, as in the past two years, when we get little snow, the snow removal budget has a surplus, which goes back into city coffers.
So for now, we feel free on our little street. Though I hear we are expect another 15 cm of snow this week.
1 comment:
There are a few side streets in Markham that have not even been ploughed yet. There are no snow banks on the sides of the roads. It's just a thick crust of ice and impacted snow on the road that the cars go over. My mind wanders as I travel over these roads and imagine how horse drawn sleighs might have gone over these same roads 100 years ago. My progress was not impeded by the unploughed streets and there was ample space for parked cars. In fact, not one parking space was lost by snow banks. Maybe we should have just left all the streets alone. It would've saved millions of tax dollars that could've gone to better use.
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