After a tough beginning to winter marked by public criticism over snow and ice removal, Saint John is trying to let residents know what they can reasonably expect.

“It’s about framing our service level objectives as something that is actually achievable. So there are limitations both with equipment and the effectiveness of our road salt so we can’t always guarantee that we’re going to get down to bare pavement,” Michael Hugenholtz, commissioner of transportation and environmental services for Saint John, said in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

“I certainly understand the frustration from citizens over the conditions we face in winter, but we don’t have unlimited resources as a city so we establish budgets and it’s very important that we deliver a consistent level of service throughout the wintertime so citizens know what to expect.”

The city has been under fire for how it manages snow removal this winter, particularly for how public sidewalks are serviced. Complaints culminated last week when seven-year-old Brayden Jensen-Knox fell and hit his head while trying to navigate the icy unserviced sidewalks in his neighbourhood.

That, combined with “constituent feedback,” prompted Mayor Don Darling to request a report to council on the Winter Management Plan — the document that lays out how the city delivers its snow clearing services.

Hugenholtz paid a visit to Common Council Monday night where councillors largely echoed one another over the need to temper public expectations.

“I think the public needs to know … that’s how we’ve got to solve our problems. So I understand why my house isn’t getting plowed, why my street is at a lower priority. We can’t do everything,” Ward 2 councillor Blake Armstrong said at the meeting.

Fellow north-end councillor John MacKenzie said “you can’t depend on the city 100 per cent… You have to take some kind of responsibility there.”

“We need to get much better at communicating the message and increasing the awareness of everyone,” new city manager John Collin said, speaking up at his first meeting of Common Council since taking over the position in December.

Hugenholtz says Saint John comes with its own specific set of challenges. The climate means storms often comprise mixed precipitation and large temperature swings mean melting snow can turn to solid ice before city workers ever have a chance to get salt on the ground.

But despite these challenges, Hugenholtz says he and his team are constantly looking to tweak how they do their jobs, looking for greater efficiency wherever it can be found.

“We look at things like learning lessons from our experience. So we get together as a team to review what’s happened over the past week every Thursday morning. We look at what happened, what decisions were made and what the outcomes were,” he said.

“From year to year we look at what efficiencies can we put in place, are there any tweaks we need to make to our Winter Management Plan in terms of how we prioritize streets, and finally we look at our equipment and service delivery and say, ‘Is there any new technology out there in the market place that we need to be pursuing?’”

On the technological side of things, the department has begun outfitting trucks with “live-blades” that are better able to hug the rutted contours of the road, as well as pre-wetting salt with a brine solution to improve effectiveness and reduce waste.

But some, like Brayden’s grandmother, Tina Jensen, want to see a fundamental change in how the city operates its snow removal program, particularly when it comes to sidewalks.

Currently, Saint John plows 61 per cent of public sidewalks with a budget of just over $1.1 million. In comparison, the budget for streets is well over $5 million.

With little appetite to overhaul the 9-year-old system, changes only come in the form of the small aforementioned tweaks to street priority, although at least one councillor would like to see a return to an older form of snow removal.

“I don’t think that the city can do the sidewalks completely the way I guess they should be done,” said Ward 3 councillor Donna Reardon.

“The sidewalk plow, I’m grateful for it and I think it can continue to do the heavy lifting but I’d like to see citizens responsible for their own buildings, business or whatever.”

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