This is part II of a five part series. This one, was just odd. The Mayor has a public discussion about who should drive snowplows. It was awkward to say the least, I felt bad for the staff. Additionally, Rhodes-Conway and Verveer ask some good questions and staff give some good information.
Here’s the other parts in the series.
Part 1 – The Report
Part 3 – Budget review back to 1998
Part 4 – Comments on Paul Soglin’s posts on snow. Some good, some bad.
Part 5 – Suggestions/comments
This discussion took place at the Board of Estimates meeting on October 13th. You can see the video of here. Choose October 13th – Part II, it starts 37 minutes into the video. This discussion, particularly the one with the Mayor, points out quite a few of the complexities and issues involved with personnel and plowing. The mayor seems to think our Metro drivers should be driving plows. I REALLY recommend you read this. Or better yet, watch it to catch how testy the Mayor gets and to see and hear his attitude.
RHODES-CONWAY QUESTIONS ON SNOW AND ICE AND CUT IN EMPLOYEE POSITIONS
Rhodes-Conway asks about operating positions being eliminated.
Chris Kelley, from the Streets Department says that this is not the most desirable way to deal with a constantly growing city. We understand that these are difficult times. So, large items will go bi-weekly. Opposite day of recycling because carts are not in the way. They will have less people on the road doing large items. Brush schedule will be gone, it will be on a 6 week basis unless there is a storm and then it could be longer, they will need people . Mostly concerned about snow and ice. Lost 5 positions in 2006 and losing another 4. They are especially concerned if they have years like in the past where two years ago they plowed 14 times and 9 times last year. Some things won’t get done, sidewalks, cross walks, hauling snow and sanding will be harder. Moveouts will have to wait. Things will sit on the curb. Empty homes, when they clean them out, that stuff will sit.
Rhodes-Conway asks about snow and what the cost to contract that capability if we lose 4 positions?
Kelley says snow removal is different than salting and sanding. $15,000 for snow removal if that is an average year for 5 times per year. We haven’t been in the average.
Actually $30,000 because its $15K for each calendar year each winter.
George Dreckmann says every year they evaluate the snow contractors and they have to let people go because they don’t meet our standards. So while there are people out there with equipment, they might not be people we can count on. They dropped 4 contractors in the last 4 to 6 years.
Rhodes-Conway asks about public education budget.
Dreckman says $25,000 cut was the money added last year for snow and ice, that is what was removed from the budget. $25,000 left for public education, outside of recyclopedia, they have a separate item for that. Other piece is item 13, $3500 for community outreach. Weeekend and after hours work. Compost classes and renting a booth. Several staff might do that work.
MAYOR DAVE CIESLEWICZ’S QUESTIONS ABOUT PLOWING (About 51:40 on the tape)
Mayor: Says he has some follow up questions about the four positions. How many positions do you have authorized to plow snow?
Kelley: “Well, that’s a tough one, ah . . . um . . .” If we have a snow fall during the day and we have to do our basic service, we will not be able to cover all of our routes for plowing, with the other agencies as well, we will be short probably 5 or 6 small runs. If we had the positions, we pretty well could cover it, we would be maybe one short. It all depends upon how many people they have off on vacation time, or leave time.
Mayor: But you have about 139 people, right, who are authorized to plow . . . trained to plow snow.
Kelley: Correct
Mayor: And you have 90 pieces of equipment, right?
Kelley: Correct
Mayor: So you have 49 . . .
Kelley: (Interrupts) 90 pieces of equipment for snow and ice, if you are doing basic services as well they still have recycling and trash to go out, they have to do that basic service as well. So, to cover them both, they don’t have enough people. If they are talking off time, they will be able to handle that they have with what they have. But, the list will go around quicker because they have to do all those basic services as well, besides plowing the snow.
Mayor: Sure, but you have 179 positions total and this is only 4 out of the 179 (you might want to watch the video to see the look on the Mayor’s face here).
Kelley: Correct, this is 4 out of the 179.
Mayor: And then there is an addition of $50,000 in your seasonal budget?
Kelley: We’re deleting two tho in number 6 for the brush, adding 3 so gaining one which is a seasonal one, but doesn’t help with snow and ice because it is a seasonal. By contract they have to be laid off December 1 and can come back in April.
Dreckman: And they can’t drive the equipment.
Kelley: Yes, they can’t drive without a CDL holder with them, by contract.
Mayor: And you currently have six positions held open.
Kelley: We have six held open, they normally would have been filled by now. Their normal process it to get them on board for leaves as well as get them trained before the snow flies. There’s alot to do in that small period of time, usually they hire them in August. We didn’t do that because last year they hired them and almost had to lay them off. And that doesn’t look good for any one of us sitting here.
Mayor: So, under my budget proposal, no one is going to lose their jobs?
Kelley: There will be nobody laid off, but we will be losing 4 of the positions.
Mayor: But there is no person in those jobs?
Kelley: Right.
Mayor: And you have 139 people who are authorized to plow snow. And you have 90 pieces of equipment.
Dreckman: (Interrupts) And we have about a 45% rate of decline when we call people to come in. And we have the ability to call in the least senior person, but they might say they can’t come in becasue they have been drinking.
Mayor: But is that 45% rate of decline during the first snow or the 10th?
Dreckman: That’s the average.
Kelley: It’s an average. We can’t force anyone, except the lowest people to work. In the 30 years he has worked there, he worked his way up from the bottom from second to the top, in the 30 years they never had supervisors plowing snow until 2007 and almost had to do it again last year. That’s not a common thing, and he hopes it doesn’t become a common thing. He took this job to get out of that. He is on call 24/7 and he’s out there when it snows. It’s not that he is not still out there night or day, its not about the hours, it’s the stress of the work.
Mayor: No one wants to see Schumacher out there in a plow. Especially with his eye sight these days. (ha, ha, ha . . but seriously . . . ) Are there more people we can train in city government who can plow snow.
Kelley: We already have that. We have people from forestry that are plowing. We have people from Parks Construction that are plowing. We have people from Engineering that come over and plow. But they have jobs they have to do as well if it is during the core day. Parks and Forestry send people over, and Parks Construction sends people over, if they have people there. Some of their people are off on their comp time that they use. If it is a larger storm, forestry can’t send their people over because they have to deal with trees down and that. It all depends upon the circumstances and the day. Sometimes we get 5 or 6, sometimes we get 3, sometimes we get 12. It all depends upon the storm and it all depends upon if we can get ahold of them or not. It depends on holidays and everything else.
Mayor: What about Metro drivers?
Kelley: Well, that is a new ballgame if you’re going to bring Metro in. First of all, you have union issues. Second of all you’re going to have issues with them driving a bus vs driving a snow plow, which are two totally different things. He’d be happy to have anyone come out and ride with a plow and you’ll see its a very different thing with a snow plow vs. a bus. The bus drivers call us to get them out, so I don’t think any of them are going to want to be behind the truck during an ice storm. An ice storm is another story.
Dreckman: There’s another serious issue with the Metro thing. Who’s going to come up with the overtime money to train the drivers? Because they have their own responsibilities 40 hours a week and if we’re going to train them to plow snow, then they are going to have to be paid overtime just for the training. And then another issue with people coming over from other agencies, which has been a problem for us, is that they are not accountable to us. We’re not their supervisors, and that is a real issue, at times. It hasn’t been generally because we have had some old line experienced people who come over and help us, but some of those people have retired. And so there is a question of accountability of that employee to one of the supervisors in the streets division, because they really don’t work for us, even tho they are out plowing the street. So, if there isn’t a supervisor from Forestry, the lines of accountability are blurred. And with Metro, they’d be blurred even more.
Mayor: Well, sure, but you’d deal with that. And what’s more important, that issue of accountability or the issue of getting enough people out. If you got a 45% turn down rate, wouldn’t you want to expand the number of people you can ask?
Dreckman: We want to expand the number of people we can count on.
Kelley: And we need qualified people.
Dreckman: And that’s a problem.
Kelley: Qualified people is a huge thing. I don’t want people out there plowing snow and putting anybody’s family or lives in jeopardy, because they are not sure what they are doing. They might be able to handle a bus, but when you’re talking a plow with a wing and a spreader unit and you have to make sure you are doing everything that needs to be done to make it safe for everybody, we sure don’t want to put the bus driver as well as the public in harm’s way.
Mayor: Sure, but what’s a park’s employee who drives a snow plow, what are they doing in the summer?
Kelley: Park’s Construction employees put in the parks in the summer. They have the equipment that they bring over. We use their vehicles. When they purchase a vehicle, they have a plow put on it, so we can use their vehicles. Same thing with forestry. Parks itself has one vehicle, and we use that as well.
Mayor: It just seem to me that it would be that much of a leap to teach a Metro Bus Driver to drive a plow, any more than it is to teach someone in Engineering or Parks or something else to drive a plow. Everyone has got to learn that. I mean, if you can drive a bus with 80 passengers, and we entrust you to do that, it seems we can entrust you to drive a snow plow.
Kelley: Then the other issue will be will they be able to be there when they need them for Metro. Because when we call people, we have to have them there quickly.
Mayor: Right, but we have drivers driving different shifts and have days off, just like Parks and Engineering and everything else.
And with that, the Mayor moves on to another subject . . .
VERVEER’S QUESITONS ON SNOW
Verveer asked about winter parking challenges and clearing the streets. What’s new from last year – especially with the parking lots from 3 to Brittingham Park and working with UW.
Kelley says that they had the lots and no one used them. They sent out an email and Brittingham is the one they will continue with. This frees them up for bike paths and sidewalks that are more important.
On UW they are working to get smaller version of yes/no icon when snow emergency on their website. They met quite a bit of resistance. They don’t think it impacts most students. They might be able to work with it if the students can opt out. Also trying to get out other notification systems in place. Text message and email. Hoping people will sign up for that. He was wrong about the text message and they found a way to do it cheap.
Verveer asks about why we can’t ask Bascom Hall to send out one email at the beginning of the year. Says he doesn’t think our efforts are working and wishes they would send an email.
Verveer asks why the $25,000 comes out of snow.
Most of $25000 will be spent beginning of this year at WSUM and WORT.
Verveer asks about Facebook advertising.
Most of money is spent, but dropped the ball and will look into but money is spent.
WRAP UP
And that was about it for discussion of snow for the year . . . Rhodes-Conway and Verveer were the only alders to ask about the impact of losing 4 more staff on snow plowing efforts. More to come . . .
