City rethinking road full plan

City roads officials are re-considering whether to reduce towing cars from the street cleaning plan this year.

Andre Chabot over concerns from Calgarians that street cleaning won’t be extremely effective in the wake of a $700,000 cut to the roads department budget, acting transport GM Doug Morgan said re-introducing towing is one option being looked at.

Surely we have gone back and had a hard look at the cut to spring cleaning, said Morgan. We have had a look at how we can lessen the crash and one of the items that we discussed was maybe putting the towing back in to ensure that we have as much chance for that first pass to be effective.

Officials said last week that along with not towing cars out of the way as has been finished in years past crews will only make one pass of each neigh boyhood and not work overtime this year as part of cost saving actions. Mayor Naheed Nenshi called the decision to take the entire $700,000 cut from the spring street cleaning budget, a lot too much.

What I have heard from a lot of citizens is it’s probably a step too far, he said. I know that the roads are re-thinking their plan, seeing what they can do, in exacting they are looking at reinstate the towing so that the 1st pass you can get the full road clean and you do not have to worry about parked cars.

Nenshi said he will sit down with roads official and expects to have a decision before the next council meeting April 28.Chabot said the decision to find savings in Spring Street clear out is possibly a way of managers pushing back against the cuts. You have got to doubt sometimes when you see motherhood and apple pie stuff being future as part of a global cut. he said.

At the end of the day, I think there is enough suppleness within the budget for them to do the job we asked them to do. Morgan said it will cost $135,000 to do the towing, with $65,000 of that probable to be recovered through ticketing cars they move.