People in Waterloo may be thinking of warm sand and sunshine these days, but city council got a closer look at what crews were dealing with this past winter. A report was presented at the city council meeting on Monday afternoon. According to data collected by the city, bylaw officers received over 2,122 complaints about sidewalk clearing. Although that number is similar to the winter of 2024/2025, it is a 240 per cent increase compared to 2023/2024. Bylaw officers gave out 799 orders related to snow clearing, performed 209 clean-ups and handed out 353 fines. Council also heard the city called in extra contractors and trucking companies to help clear intersections and haul away snow. “As the winter progressed, we saw our staff burning out,” Bob Henderson, the City of Waterloo’s director of Transportation Services, said. “The call-in assignments for overtime were becoming a challenge. Staff were tending not to come in to do overtime, as per their right per the collective agreement.” He noted the same teams that drive the snow plow often also load snow for removal from downtown. Henderson was also asked about the aggressive behaviour some city crews faced while trying to do their jobs. “In the past we typically saw people either yelling at drivers or throwing shovels at the trucks, but it seems to be escalating to the point where people are trying to enter the vehicles and get to the drivers and attack them. So, we’ve been looking at mitigating measures to deter that kind of behaviour through potentially the use of forward-facing camera technology,” Henderson said. He hoped a milder winter next year could lead to cooler heads. Recommended improvements The staff report also recommended some measures to improve how the city handles snow. Suggestions included adding specialized “belly” blades on plows. The blades apply downward pressure to help tackle ice-packed roads. Another recommendation included reviewing the city’s snow storage facility’s ability to handle large amounts of snow as the “snow dump” was once again pushed to its limits. “We ended up just stockpiling the snow higher and higher. We had points of snow that were up to 14 metres high,” said Chad Heise, manager of transportation operations with the City of Waterloo. To solve the space problem, the city budgeted $1.9 million over the next few budget cycles to expand its snow storage facility and secure extra dumping capacity. Staff did not recommend moving forward with a city-wide windrow clearing program due to the significant investment required to service the estimated 30,000 driveways that would be impacted. Liability was also a concerns for the windrow-clearing program. Deficit squeezes reserve The severe weather also gouged a $700,000 deficit into the city’s 2025 fiscal winter control budget. To pay for the influx of contract plows, emergency sidewalk clearing, and rampant overtime, the city had to draw heavily on its Winter Control Reserve. However, Heise offered reassurance that the city is currently on solid financial footing for the remainder of the year. “Our budgets are based on a calendar year,” Heise explained. “So come January 1, 2026, we did start a new budget. So we are not over budget at this point.”
