The Town of Huntsville’s director of operations will be able to declare a Significant Weather Event in order to suspend minimum maintenance requirements, protect the municipality from liability, and caution residents and visitors.
Town manager of operations Kevin Boucock was before Huntsville council at its January 24 meeting asking it to give authority to the director of operations, or his designate, to call such events.
He said legislation detailing required minimum maintenance standards for municipalities was passed in early 2000 with two main goals: To help municipalities when it comes to claims and lawsuits, and to set up a consistent level of service across the province such as the amount of time municipalities have to address issues like road sidewalk maintenance and snow removal.
Boucock said the ability to suspend standard maintenance requirements due to a significant weather event was added to the legislation in 2018.
“We haven’t found it necessary to put it into place. It covers a lot of different weather events, but the main thing is to help the municipality if for some reason unforeseen weather… comes in and challenges the municipality getting it [roads, sidewalks] done in the times and tables set up in the minimum maintenance standards,” he said, adding that issues faced by municipalities could extend to equipment failure, a delay in getting parts, or the possibility that a significant part of the municipal operations workforce could be down due to COVID.
Although Boucock said there is no intent to use the ability to declare such an event unless it is necessary, it does protect the municipality by halting maintenance requirements until the advisory is lifted.
“It’s not to be used all the time, not planning on using it but it’s there. It’s a tool. It’s in our back pocket if we need it,” he said.
Director of operations and protective services Steve Hernen told council the issue arose following discussions with the District and area municipalities about helping one another in the event of significant weather and staff shortages due to COVID. He said calling a Significant Weather Statement is how the District plans to handle staff shortages if they occur.
“They’ve [District staff] got the authority downloaded to them that they can just do it. If council doesn’t want to pass this and we run into the same situations, it would simply mean that we’d have to call an emergency council meeting and get council to make that declaration. So, this is just eliminating that one step,” said Hernen. “The intent of it certainly is not to use it on a regular basis. It was more so with this whole COVID, and this planning, and back three, four weeks ago when the government was saying start to plan for, you know, 30 or 40 per cent workforce shortages, we realized that here’s one thing we can do to help shore that up, if you will, if we run into staffing problems.”
Council approved the bylaw to delegate the authority to staff to declare such an event.
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