WELLINGTON – Costly changes are likely coming to the county's snow maintenance fleet in April to improve future service.
In a new report on ways to reduce the county's proposed 2024 roads budget, county staff stood by their recommendations to convert 10 existing seasonal snowplow drivers to full-time equipment operators as a way to address ongoing hiring difficulties, provide improved service quality and reduce the risk of accidents on county roads.
Requesting further details and alternatives for the potential full-time hires, the roads committee previously directed staff to identify projects that can be deferred to lower the proposed increase in the 2024 budget during a November meeting.
"There's a lot of health and safety issues and regulations that we need to abide by," said county engineer Don Kudo, during a roads committee meeting Tuesday morning. "Having additional full-time equipment operators will definitely help us achieve the maintenance goals and needs that we have for our roads area."
According to Kudo, hiring seasonal workers has become increasingly difficult for county staff, especially as demands for road maintenance and service level expectations from the public have increased.
Recently, two seasonal staff hires resigned from their positions as county snow plow drivers but Kudo said he's not surprised as it's common for seasonal staff to quit when they find full-time work somewhere else or decide driving the snow plow isn't for them.
"It's always a challenge to get our full roads complement," said Kudo. "By converting the 10 to full time, it will at least reduce the numbers of seasonal employees we need to hire."
In addition to hiring issues, the report said health, public safety and risk management are drivers in converting seasonal staff to full-time status while increases in the road network, traffic volumes and driver behaviour have create issues when staff perform road maintenance and service level expectations continue to increase.
"The lack of experience of some of our seasonal staff has seen an increase in the number of incident reports," said staff in the report. "The driving public would be better served and risk would be reduced by increasing the number of experienced full-time Roads Equipment Operators."
Without staff increases, the report warns there could also be a decrease in maintenance tasks completed annually due to extra staff being required as spotters during significant traffic control sets, to safely reverse vehicles and during work in and around hydro lines.
Currently, the county employs 36 seasonal snow plow workers from November to April but Kudo said he anticipates the need to convert more to full-time in the future.
It would cost $371,700 to convert 10 employees to full-time.
Passing the budget report as presented, council also approved staff suggestions to defer rehabilitating Bridge B012100 on Wellington Road 12 to 2025 and reducing the Speed Management capital budget from $200,000 to $75,000 to reduce the tax levy requirement by 0.1 per cent in 2024.
These decisions will return to county council later this month.
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program
