ATHABASCA - A discussion over how to best provide affordable snow removal to some of Athabasca County’s disadvantaged residents stalled out after concerns whether the program could be exploited.
During the Aug. 10 committee of the whole meeting, councillors unanimously voted to recommend a resolution that allows grader operators more flexibility with their work, and to forward the policy on residential driveway snowplowing to either the first policy review committee, or committee of the whole meeting after Oct. 31 to define what “needs-based” services would look like.
“We’ve made some improvements, but I think we can go further with it,” said reeve Brian Hall. “There’s got to be some way we could build this so that it isn’t just open to seniors and can be based on a more ‘need-driven’ model.”
Currently, the resolution enables county administration to use its discretion to vary from the policy “where operational efficiencies are believed achievable with the objective of overall performance improvement in the service delivery of snow clearing.”
Some councillors, including Rob Minns, felt that adding a grey area into the policy would put operators at risk, since certain members of the community might use that exemption to make demands.
“I love policies, it makes them black and white,” said Minns. “My question is what happens when someone, and there’s a few of them out there, uses this to make a demand? I don’t think our previous policies will do enough to protect our employees.”
Councillors agreed that protecting employees was paramount and some, like Hall, felt that giving the operators more discretion would be beneficial.
“If we tie these guys up so tight that they can’t do anything, we don’t get that superior service, we get what we’ve got right now,” said the reeve. “A lot of what we’re talking about comes down to how we deliver the service. Who cares how they drive the graders; I just want the result, and I want (the operators and administration) to have the flexibility to handle (uncommon situations).”
Sub: Who qualifies?
Currently, seniors are able to purchase the snow removal flags for a cheaper price and costs them $25 instead of $75 — administration estimates it costs $55.57 per driveway. While the county is losing roughly $5 a driveway at the current usage rates — 150 seniors flags and 72 regular priced flags were used — councillors still expressed interest in expanding the program.
“Right now, the policy is missing something, and that’s consideration for disabled residents,” said Coun. Tracy Holland. “I know we have talked about it in the past, and there are absolutely people that are in a wheelchair and would benefit from the service.”
The natural question then arose, how would the county identify disabled ratepayers? When asked previously, Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) had said that it wasn’t a program they would run.
One possible solution put forward by Hall would be to tie the treatment to income, although it drew some criticism from other councillors.
“We have a society that supports people that are in a less fortunate position,” said Hall. “If you really don’t want to show us your taxes for that purpose, it’s easy, you just don’t do it.”
