Ripped up sod, clipped walls

HRM’S role in snow clearing damage up for debate

Almost as certain as the snow flies in winter, Patrick Horsman expects damage to his front lawn by snow clearing machines.

“I’ll say up front I have pretty strong feelings on snow removal,” he said. “It’s never been great and always mostly been poor.”

The issue of snow clearing damages, and the municipality’s role in the clean-up, was brought up at a Halifax regional council meeting this week.

Damage happens every year because the vehicles are too big for the sidewalks, he said.

“It literally doesn’t fit. Either the tires rip up the ground around the sidewalks or they bump into things like rock walls, or concrete block walls, which is my case,” said Horsman, a downtown Dartmouth homeowner.

“There’s nowhere great to put the snow. They keep trying to pile it on things anyway because we don’t actually remove snow, we just push it around in circles.”

The wall in front of his house has been clipped a few times but his lawn and garden tends to get ripped up every year. Horsman said he installed poles with reflective markers to mark the property, but it remains an ongoing issue because by February, they’ve run out of places to put the snow and it goes onto private properties.

While the annual damage is frustrating, Horsman said HRM and the contractors are very responsive when he reports it. He said the bigger damages get fixed in a timely manner, but the ripped-up sod can take months to fix, or sometimes not at all.

“When it happens over and over and over again, it’s that slowly grinding annoyance of every spring going, ‘I have to repair the front lawn and the garden.’ Every year.”

STAFF REPORT ARRIVED TUESDAY

Snow clearing and damage is a common concern residents bring up with their councillors. Deputy Mayor Sam Austin (Dartmouth Centre) previously asked staff to look into how HRM could be more involved and helpful to resolve snow clearing damage complaints. The report landed on the council table on Tuesday.

Some clearing is done in-house, but a lot of it is contracted out. When a contractor damages a property, it’s covered by their insurance. HRM can’t get involved beyond directing residents to contact the contractor, explained Joel Plater, HRM manager of risk and insurance services.

“It’s a private matter between the person who did the damage and their insurer,” he told council.

Austin said he was disappointed by the inflexibility of the staff report into the issue. In the report, staff said HRM’S hands are tied due to the insurance issue and that HRM couldn’t act as an ombudsman because the office of the superintendent of insurance performs that function.

“The issue here for me is, yes, I understand there are legal complexities about who is responsible during snow clearing operations when somebody’s property gets damaged. However, that said, I reject the idea that we can shrug and just dispense with our responsibility here,” he said.

It’s the HRM who is hiring the contractors to provide the service so HRM should be more involved, he added.

“It’s our streets, people we’ve hired to do this.”

“When there is a dispute with a contractor, the response from the HRM is ‘too bad, so sad’ and that’s really an unsatisfying situation,” Austin said. He said he was hoping there would be an opportunity for HRM to act in an ombudsman role.

“It’s rather disheartening to get a report that says you have no options.”

PRESSURE THE CONTRACTORS

John Traves, HRM solicitor, said HRM does act as an ombudsman, in a way, because they pressure the contractors to deal with the damage through insurance or pay for it themselves.

“We have no insurable interest: We don’t own the property that’s been damaged, and we don’t own the vehicle that has caused the damage,” Traves said.

Residents don’t feel like they have control over the situation, said Coun. Patty Cuttell (Spryfield – Sambro Loop – Prospect Road). And to say HRM is hands-off causes a lot of frustration because it’s not the resident hiring the contractor, it’s HRM, she added.

“Legally we don’t have a recourse, it doesn’t mean morally we don’t engage in managing that relationship to the best we can with the contractors,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting. “Recognizing that if things do become so poorly managed by a contractor, then we really won’t have much of a choice when it comes to contract renewal time if they’re refusing to deal with the claims in a reasonable manor.”

Council should have some data on the number of complaints and how fast contractors fix the damage, said Coun. Pam Lovelace (Hammonds Plains – St. Margarets). Because it’s handled by private contractors, HRM doesn’t have that kind of information.

Most of the damage occurs to Hrm-owned property at the edge of residents’ lawns, pointed out Steve York, with HRM’S winter maintenance department. Contractors have a deadline of June 1 to fix damages that are reported in the spring and “almost always they’re all completed by June 1st except for a few outliers that have unique circumstances that may require time to repair,” he said.

Coun. Tim Outhit (Bedford - Wentworth) said he couldn’t support the status quo on this issue.

“I think one of the things we’ve said for years is we want to start thinking (of taxpayers) like a customer in the services we provide,” Outhit said. “Well, we’re kind of jerking the customer around with whose insurance should it be and … I think it’s unfair.”