Agenda - Public Works Committee - 05/18/2004

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P.W. CASE # 1 SUMMARY FOR 2003-2004 SNOW REMOVAL SEASON By: Grant Riemer, Public Works Supervisor Background: This case is meant to be a brief review of the 2003-2004 snow removal season. The snow removal season consisted of 11 major plowing events and 14 minor events. Major events consist of calling in a full crew, plus part time staff. Minor events normally consist of sanding intersections, plowing/sanding main routes, drift control, etc... The first call for snow and ice control was on November 4, 20003 for minor sanding. Our first full scale plowing operation was on November 26, 2003 compared to February 3rd the previous year. Our equipment held up well, with the major problems being a broken wing post and two major hydraulic hose ruptures. All three problems were major enough to force the equipment out of service, for the duration of the respective storms. Overall our snow removal fleet is in good shape. For the upcoming year we will be adding some new equipment to our fleet. We replaced our 1992 plow truck with a 2004 model and added a new piece of equipment for our sidewalk/trail maintenance fleet which includes a broom and snow blower attachments. We also purchased a large snow blower that attaches to our front-end loader. This will mainly be used for the snow removal operation in Ramsey Town Center where the snow will have to be loaded in trucks and hauled away, rather than plowed to the side of the road. The blower will load the snow into trucks after it has been windrowed up by crews. For the upcoming season we estimate that we will still meet our goal of an 8-hour completion time for main routes and 9-10 hours on cul-de-sac routes. The following table represents some general statistics regarding our plowing operation: 1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2001 2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004 Av9 Full scale operation10 N/A 11 11 3 11 9 Minor operations N/A N/A 17 29 12 14 18 Salt amounts 154 290 480 510 200 500 356 Salt/Sand amounts 1400 1200 1500 1350 300 1100 1141 Complaints- total 67 N/A 137 87 14 64 74 Sod damage 18 N/A 37 38 1 35 26 Mailbox damage 7 N/A 10 7 1 12 7 Misc. 42 N/A 90 42 12 15 40 The overall scope of our operation continues to change. Continued development and growth in our City will place more demand on our staff and equipment. Ramsey Town Center will bring with it the challenges of parking ramps, contract hauling, snow removal operations instead of a snowplowing operation and the coordination of everyone in the area to accomplish the task of clearing a downtown area as quickly and economically as possible. Sidewalk maintenance is another area that is expanding quickly. We currently plow the school walking area on the same priority as our streets, with the rest of the sidewalks done 1-2 days after the streets are cleared. Demand is starting to increase to accomplish system wide clearing of sidewalks as soon as