Staff recommend year-round winter operations unit following review of Toronto’s February snowstorm response

Toronto needs a stronger plan to respond to major snow events, including a year-round dedicated winter operations unit, after an independent review found “significant shortcomings” in the city’s response to February’s major storm event that dumped more than 50 centimetres of snow.

The findings of the review, conducted by Municipal VU Consulting Inc. at the request of City Manager Paul Johnson, were released on Friday.

It found that while the city’s winter maintenance processes and procedures tend to work for routine snowfall, “they face systemic gaps that limit their effectiveness when major snow events hit.”

“The gaps are interconnected, cutting across policy, operations, contracts, technology, and communication, and should be addressed to build a more resilient, agile, accountable program,” the report stated.

Among the challenges the city faced were clearing sidewalks and residential roads, which took weeks. The review found that there was limited snow storage on narrow rights-of-way, unreliable equipment, reporting discrepancies on what sidewalks and streets were cleared and communications with the city via 311 and PlowTO were inconsistent.

The review also found that city contracts were structured for salting and clearing but not for large-scale snow removal and that there was a lack of surge capacity in staffing and equipment.

“While we have a framework of a plan, we do not have the operationalization efforts below that to ensure that we can, in real time, respond to the things that happen when we have major snow events,” Johnson told reporters during a news conference Friday, discussing the report.

“We also don’t really treat it sometimes like it is the emergency that it is.”

In his report going before next week’s Executive Committee, among Johnson’s recommendations are for the city to finalize and operationalize a “detailed, scalable response” when there is a major snow event and procure dedicated, unit-based snow removal contracts.

“Toronto needs to remove snow in major snow events and yet we don’t have a really robust contracting approach for the removal of snow. We do not have standalone contracts as other cities do for snow removal itself,” Johnson said.

“Why that matters is that we are constantly having to trade off in major snow events, whether we’re pushing snow in the clearing phase and salting and sanding, or whether we’re removing snow so we can have better storage capacity.”

Johnson is also recommending that the city establish a dedicated year-round winter operation unit to address the lack of surge capacity in staff and equipment.

“It does not exist here at the City of Toronto at the moment, and it will, moving forward,” the city manager said.

The unit, which could be established within the current staff through restructuring, would coordinate all aspects of winter readiness, including plan development, mapping, training, contract oversight and inter-divisional drills.

The review also found that public messaging during the storm did not reflect what was happening on the ground.

“Residents, Councillors, and staff lacked clear and timely information about snow removal timelines and operational constraints,” the report stated.

That’s why Johnson is recommending the city implement a modernized and tiered communication approach.

“It’s a lot like flooding events that happen from time to time, where we need to be clear with the public how we’re doing and communicate better the results rather than the effort,” Johnson said.

He also wants the city not to put a temporary hold on 311 service calls as the snow is falling, to allow residents to report their concerns and complaints.

“It leads to periods where it looks like there aren’t a lot of things going wrong in our response, and then all of a sudden we see the surge when we open up the ability for people to log their concerns,” he said.

“It would give us a chance to heat map how we can better respond to certain areas of the city that may have some issues in terms of either clearing or the removal of snow.”

The independent review is the second report into the city’s response to the February snow event. Toronto’s Auditor General also released a separate report last week, finding that the city had not fully implemented recommendations around snow clearing ahead of the snowstorm.

“The Auditor General has indicated areas where we can improve in terms of the monitoring of the performance of our contractors, but in terms of what residents and business owners and visitors to the City of Toronto might experience, when we get those smaller amounts of snow, we do a pretty strong job,” Johnson said.

“However, we consistently fall short of that mark when we have a major winter event.”