Waterloo Region Connected

Full Version: Winter Walking and Cycling
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
(02-19-2019, 11:32 PM)the_councillor Wrote: [ -> ]Speaking specifically to whether we could fund it?  Yes, Kitchener is in great shape financially, we could conceivably afford to pay for this service, but here's the rub.  At $4 million in one time costs and an additional ~$3.5 million in annual operating costs, it would be ALL we could afford to do over the next many years.  There are a few issues with this:

-  I remain convinced this service in other cities is not good.  I follow it very closely and have pictures sent often (daily recently) from other cities like London.  It's a LOT of money for mediocre value.

- The environmental harm, CO2 from sidewalk plows + about 70 more dump trucks of salt into the earth each year... on the heels of our council committing to environmental targets no less.

- Residents have been clear in every statistically-significant survey we've put out-- the vast majority want us to try to maintain services and hold taxes to inflation.  I know many here may not care... but the point is there are limits to tax increases.  Especially with regressive property-taxation like ours.  Remember, an ultra-wealthy Google-couple pulling in $300K in salary pays the same tax on their $400k condo as a widower on a $30k pension in the modest $400K home she raised her family in.  We need to consider these people too.

- As mentioned above, we could probably perform this service (though as poorly as others) and keep taxes near inflation... but what we need to realize is one of two things will happen; either taxes will rise well above inflation (highly unlikely) or other progressive things will begin to get (perhaps quietly) cut, or scaled back.  What things?  Well I know this council intends to spend a lot more on slowing traffic down, cycling infrastructure is a big ticket item (many signed pledges for), affordable housing, and I personally want to better leverage technology and our narrowband streetlight network for smart-city initiatives.

This is what we must balance.  I get people here don't have to acknowledge this reality, but I do, and it is the reality.  Even if other cities cleared snow well, I'd still struggle losing other progressive items like those mentioned above due to the huge cost... but when they can't... when I hear people with disabilities can't traverse sidewalks in places like Ottawa and London a week after a snowfall... I think maybe we at least try to go after the 10-15% that don't clear their walk first.  And despite popular belief, we haven't tried before, or put ANY new dollars towards enforcement in my 8 years on council.  That is, until this year, and bylaw has just begun trying to change behaviours.

I do agree that if the city did the work, that work would not be up to everyones standards. Even now, I noticed that some city of Kitchener parks that are situated adjacent to sidewalks have sidewalks that are either ice-covered (freeze thaw runoff) and/or corners that are not passable (as of today), due to plow operators discarding snow in those sections. I think this is where, though, we get upset about hearing what by-law is doing - we need to manage, at the very least, city responsible sidewalks and pay those parks workers (CUPE 68) their band 5 salary (about $27.96 top rate - or less if they're temps at $22.57) to clear sidewalks rather than by-law officers that make $10 more an hour (band 7 at $38.25 - based off of CUPE 791) and end up using poor judgement when deciding to who to warn or ticket - and most likely the fault of the information that the city is giving them for that poor judgement.

As for CO2 harm - I don't buy that. Of course, if this is our biggest concern, you can get battery powered devices. That said, what the plows add to the CO2, at maybe 150 plows (including sidewalk plows) vs the close to 200,000 vehicles registered to Kitchener residences already, would be insignificant. We can't take those vehicles off of the roads, and even if we did, at 0.075% of the total vehicles, as Yoda would say; "A difference it would not make." I get that staff and council want to take the lead in CO2 reduction for example, but at the moment, we live in a cold-winter city, a sprawling city with a horrible road layout and horrible transit, it'll be a long, long time before we see meaningful changes in the way we operate as a group. Likely not in mine or your time.

It's true about the property tax impact with those living in condo's versus those in a home, especially a senior in a single family home. There are ways around this already when a senior files their tax return. This could be altered further. At the same time, that Google couple living in a condo, along with the 200 other households in that condo, are paying for services that doesn't come close to what they're paying. If, for example, we say that this will cost $25/year for a $400k home - condo owners would pay $5,000 collectively for a service they'll never get. As for the senior -- most likely they're paying for someone to come out to do the work, at $20-$50 a pop, even if it's just the sidewalk, if they can't do it themselves at this moment.

Sadly, we're in Ontario. Snow, ice-storms, freeze thaw cycles, are the nature of our beast. We can't safely eliminate salt or CO2, not can we always have clear sidewalks everywhere so that everyone can move freely 100% of the time. We can go after the worse offenders, but other offenders that try to keep things good (including the city) will never achieve 100% success simply due to our weather.

Well, there is one ways to have 100% success, but the costs would be astronomical. Heated sidewalks would solve the issue.

As for me, I live in a part of the city with no sidewalk (for some odd reason). Only cement is from the bus stop that was removed when the LRT was approved. I only say this because personally, I have zero to gain if the city actually did start clearing sidewalks -- I only receive the bill, not the service. No different when I lived in a condo-townhome, we paid for private snow clearing (on the road) and garbage collection, and also paid for those services with our property taxes. It is, what it is.
(02-20-2019, 03:21 PM)jeffster Wrote: [ -> ]At the same time, that Google couple living in a condo, along with the 200 other households in that condo, are paying for services that doesn't come close to what they're paying.

Depends how you're interpret the "service" of sidewalk clearing, though. Is the service really only to people who would otherwise have to clear sidewalks in front of their residences and businesses? Or is the service to all residents and visitors to the area who use sidewalks if only to get from their parking space to their destination?

I choose the second interpretation, myself. In that case everyone's paying for services that they are themselves benefiting from.
Right. People living in condo don't have much of a (share of) sidewalk to clear, but they are more likely than suburban dwellers to be walking and using the clear sidewalks.
(02-20-2019, 04:19 PM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]Right. People living in condo don't have much of a (share of) sidewalk to clear, but they are more likely than suburban dwellers to be walking and using the clear sidewalks.

This is definitely true.

However, unlike suburban house owners, they are far more likely to spend actual dollars directly on sidewalk clearing, and such costs are far higher than the city would charge.

So, if you live in a tall tower, you'll spend more on sidewalk clearing than you would.

If you live in a townhome condo with substantial city street frontage, you could pay less.
Its a week past the beginning of the storm and I still have to watch mothers struggle to carry their child and stroller over a snowbank. this is unacceptable and arguing we shouldn't spend our tax dollars to right this shameful situation. We had a pilot project proposed last year people who voted against it voted for this suffering.

Its very hard to remain cool and polite when you are faced with this every. Single. Day.
How do we report snow clearing issues to the Region? I thought there was a post with all the appropriate contacts for all levels within the region, but it isn't pinned.
In Kitchener, you just use the Pingstreet App. You can take a photo and submit it that way.

I wish Waterloo (or just the Region) had an app that was as good as that, and it would just figure out where to send it, based on where you were.
Pingstreet also works for reporting snow removal issues in Waterloo.
Councillor Davey: you have said that we need to see if proactive enforcement of snow removal bylaws is effective. When winter has passed, what would you lead you to conclude that proactive enforcement has been a success? What would lead you to conclude it is a failure? If you don't feel that you can make that conclusion after just one year, how long do we need?
(02-20-2019, 03:03 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: [ -> ]
(02-19-2019, 11:32 PM)the_councillor Wrote: [ -> ]Speaking specifically to whether we could fund it?  Yes, Kitchener is in great shape financially, we could conceivably afford to pay for this service, but here's the rub.  At $4 million in one time costs and an additional ~$3.5 million in annual operating costs, it would be ALL we could afford to do over the next many years.  There are a few issues with this:

-  I remain convinced this service in other cities is not good.  I follow it very closely and have pictures sent often (daily recently) from other cities like London.  It's a LOT of money for mediocre value.

- The environmental harm, CO2 from sidewalk plows + about 70 more dump trucks of salt into the earth each year... on the heels of our council committing to environmental targets no less.

- Residents have been clear in every statistically-significant survey we've put out-- the vast majority want us to try to maintain services and hold taxes to inflation.  I know many here may not care... but the point is there are limits to tax increases.  Especially with regressive property-taxation like ours.  Remember, an ultra-wealthy Google-couple pulling in $300K in salary pays the same tax on their $400k condo as a widower on a $30k pension in the modest $400K home she raised her family in.  We need to consider these people too.

- As mentioned above, we could probably perform this service (though as poorly as others) and keep taxes near inflation... but what we need to realize is one of two things will happen; either taxes will rise well above inflation (highly unlikely) or other progressive things will begin to get (perhaps quietly) cut, or scaled back.  What things?  Well I know this council intends to spend a lot more on slowing traffic down, cycling infrastructure is a big ticket item (many signed pledges for), affordable housing, and I personally want to better leverage technology and our narrowband streetlight network for smart-city initiatives.

This is what we must balance.  I get people here don't have to acknowledge this reality, but I do, and it is the reality.  Even if other cities cleared snow well, I'd still struggle losing other progressive items like those mentioned above due to the huge cost... but when they can't... when I hear people with disabilities can't traverse sidewalks in places like Ottawa and London a week after a snowfall... I think maybe we at least try to go after the 10-15% that don't clear their walk first.  And despite popular belief, we haven't tried before, or put ANY new dollars towards enforcement in my 8 years on council.  That is, until this year, and bylaw has just begun trying to change behaviours.

The regional survey for the budget this year in fact suggested that the majority of people supported increasing taxes to improve services.

Both of the types of people you highlight must pay a private contractor to clear the snow around their condo building, as condo buildings provide these services at scale it's actually much cheaper than an individual homeowner, but still much more expensive than it would cost the city to provide those services.  So your example is terrible because in those cases, a city service would save BOTH people actual dollars, as opposed to just labor.


Or maybe, and just stay with me on this one...you could cut other regressive programs, like continually widening roads.

If you care so much about taxes, why did you not take issue with the enormous sums of money spent to rebuild Belmont Ave. as a 1960s era unnecessarily wide wasteful dangerous road?  Millions could have been saved, we could be half way to paying for sidewalk plowing, and yet, nobody even questioned the need for it.

- Firstly, if you could link me to that Regional survey I'd appreciate it.  I frankly have a hard time believing it, or it certainly isn't statistically significant (as the surveys I'm referring to are.)

- Which roads have we widened?  I can't speak for every ward, but in mine, over the last ~10 years, I can't recall the city widening a single one.  In fact, we cut Lorraine Ave. from 4 lanes to 2 to install cycling lanes.

- Further, whenever we redo a road, the majority of the reason (and more importantly in this context, the vast majority of the cost) is to replace the water/sewer infrastructure underneath.  Belmont Ave. is an ironic street to point out seeing as we just approved $350K during budget to reduce the lanes and install segregated cycling lanes instead.  Not sure you're helping your case here.
(02-20-2019, 08:18 PM)jamincan Wrote: [ -> ]Councillor Davey: you have said that we need to see if proactive enforcement of snow removal bylaws is effective. When winter has passed, what would you lead you to conclude that proactive enforcement has been a success? What would lead you to conclude it is a failure? If you don't feel that you can make that conclusion after just one year, how long do we need?

Good question... staff are bringing back a report in April/May which will inform the discussion.  I wish success could be measured based on averages in comparison to historical percentages of uncleared sidewalks here... and compared to other municipalities (including ones with full city-service).  Unfortunately, that data isn't tracked and fails to account for differing weather by location or year to year.  We are left with anecdotal evidence.  Before anyone screams about killing the pilot (and it's data), remember the data collected would have been anecdotal as well (i.e. largely polling the residents).  I'd just as soon poll other cities that do this service on their satisfaction-level... which I may still pursue as it would cost an order of magnitude less.

In some ways, I wish the pilot project had been approved.  With the weather we've been having, there is no way we could have done much better than any other city (e.g. look at the road-clearing outcry right now as an example) I believe the data would have most certainly have proven my point with respect to service-quality, but I digress.

To answer your question-- I will need clear-indication from staff (with supporting data that)-- 1. they are, in fact, changing behaviours through proactive bylaw enforcement and--  2. The time it will take to get that message through to all of the city's bad-actors is reasonable.  Please note that either-way, I intend to push for the items in the point-formed list I had posted earlier in this thread.
Is there a separate Waterloo Pingstreet App? Does it work for reporting bike lane parking infractions?
Just change your location to Waterloo. 

[Image: k7PWF47.png]
(02-20-2019, 03:31 PM)chutten Wrote: [ -> ]
(02-20-2019, 03:21 PM)jeffster Wrote: [ -> ]At the same time, that Google couple living in a condo, along with the 200 other households in that condo, are paying for services that doesn't come close to what they're paying.

Depends how you're interpret the "service" of sidewalk clearing, though. Is the service really only to people who would otherwise have to clear sidewalks in front of their residences and businesses? Or is the service to all residents and visitors to the area who use sidewalks if only to get from their parking space to their destination?

I choose the second interpretation, myself. In that case everyone's paying for services that they are themselves benefiting from.

My point is, if you're in a condo, you pay condo fees to have the sidewalks taken care of. Seeing what I wrote, though, I wasn't clear on that. (damn....typos)
(02-21-2019, 02:13 AM)jeffster Wrote: [ -> ]
(02-20-2019, 03:31 PM)chutten Wrote: [ -> ]Depends how you're interpret the "service" of sidewalk clearing, though. Is the service really only to people who would otherwise have to clear sidewalks in front of their residences and businesses? Or is the service to all residents and visitors to the area who use sidewalks if only to get from their parking space to their destination?

I choose the second interpretation, myself. In that case everyone's paying for services that they are themselves benefiting from.

My point is, if you're in a condo, you pay condo fees to have the sidewalks taken care of. Seeing what I wrote, though, I was clear on that.

Oh, I'm sorry. I misinterpreted you. I was in too much of a hurry and didn't take the time to understand you better.