Grande Prairie City Council has made the decision to reduce the residential snow-clearing threshold from 13 centimetres of accumulation back to 10 centimetres after significant “pushback” from residents.
The decision to increase the trigger point for residential clearing came during council’s 2025 budget deliberations in November when it was identified the extra three centimetres could save the city $250K annually while reducing the property tax hike.
Despite their intentions, the winter proved challenging for residents, snow crews, and even members of the city council. Deputy Mayor Wade Pilat gave credit to the community, who remained quite outspoken throughout the winter, expressing their dissatisfaction with service levels in their neighbourhoods.
“We tried to change the trigger to 13 centimetres as a budget implication, we’ve had some pushback and there have been some areas of town that just haven’t seen the service level that I think council was hoping for,” he says. “I think our community does a good job of letting us know when they don’t think the goalposts are where they should be, and so I think council and administration have heard a lot of feedback, with this trigger, that it’s had some unintended consequences.”
“It’s nice to try new things, we’ve seen enough pushback that I think council would like to say- hey let’s go back to our original trigger.”
The “mid-winter/early spring surprise melt,” as described by councillors, also posed a set of unique challenges, prompting the city to implement a city-wide clearing to address flooding, and icing in anticipation of colder weather.
“We have had issues with icing, some roads have been more significantly impacted than others, we’ve had graders run down some roads where they’re just bouncing along the ice, so now we’re sending out other equipment to do some areas of town,” Pilat says.
When it comes to the question of the city’s snow removal protocol going forward, Pilat, along with the rest of the city council, say they are waiting for an end-of-season report from city administration; however, Pilat says no matter what the budget looks like- snow removal is “the right thing to do.”
“We budget for snow removal every year, some years we have a surplus, some years we’re in the hole on it, I’m not sure where we’re at this year yet, administration is bringing a full report at the end of the season to give us that update, so if it’s a red number, it’s the right thing to do, we have to do snow removal to get the city’s safety looked after.”
The most recent residential snow-clearing rotation was completed on March 10th, and the city says residential streets will no longer be cleared until another two-week rotation is initiated.
