So let's go ahead and get started.

So good evening, everyone.

Today is May 21st.

It's 6 32 p.m.

This is the operations parks and rec committee meeting.

I'm Dan Sanford.

I'll be chairing the meeting tonight.

And in attendance on the committee side, we have myself, Representative Finkel, Representative Zachary, Representative Didalo, Vice Chair, Politia, and Representative Gardner.

I do not see anybody else either on the committee or outside the committee, unless I'm missing someone.

Oh, and Representative Beckham has now joined us.

So and on the city side, we have Dennis LaDolce who will be briefing us on I believe item number one.

So what we have right now is two items, an approval uh and a review item.

So what we'll do is the first item is OPR 3201, an approval for a request to modify agreement uh 2026.018 for a city waiver with Gabrielli uh truck sales of Milford for Mac OEM parts and service under section 23- uh 18.3b um 1A, and that was uh approved by the Board of Finance 500.

What I'll do is we'll go ahead and at this time I'll take up a motion to approve item one opr 32.011.

So moved.

And do I have a second?

Okay.

There is a motion and a second to approve uh item number one.

At this time I'll open it up to discussion and I'll turn it over to our guest, Mr.

LaDolce.

Am I saying that right, sir?

I think you're on mute, Dennis.

There you go.

Hello.

Oh, there he is.

Hey Dennis, I I I don't know if you could hear me or not.

I went ahead and opened up the floor.

So the floor is yours if you want to explain uh the approval that you're asking us to do for the for the agreement.

Yeah, um I'm uh uh can you guys hear me okay?

We can.

Okay, perfect.

Uh yeah, thank you so much to the committee and and having us uh speak and all you being here tonight.

So we are proposing to amend uh the contract with Gabrielli, who is the sole source provider to Mac truck parts.

Uh we are requesting to change the contract amount from I believe it was 99,999 to 185,000 as a way to cover uh all outstanding invoices from this fiscal year.

So moving into the next fiscal year, we're coming on a clean slate and uh will help us be proactive in our efforts of trying to be more fiscally I guess responsible um when it comes to uh Mac truck parts.

We're going to try to uh phase out using Mac trucks as a way to uh diversify the vendors that we use so we don't run into this problem again.

I appreciate it.

I think it's understood what you're asking for.

I'll open it up to the floor for any questions, and then I just have one or two myself that are fairly easy.

Is there anybody on the floor that has any questions for our guests?

I'll just make it really quick if that's okay, Dan.

Uh go ahead, Representative Dillow.

Um, what are you guys thinking about transitioning to for uh services?

You know, because I know Mac, you know, Mac engines at least are made to, you know, you could try and kill them.

You know, never kill them.

What are you guys looking to transition towards um for the fleet that you're moving in that direction?

I believe it would be uh international uh trucks.

Now, Jason, uh, the department, the new department manager is here.

I think he could speak better to that.

Cool.

Good evening, everybody.

Um, so the way that we're getting by this, since Mac has made quite a monopoly out of uh out of their services.

We have moved to we're we're kind of trying to phase out international as well.

Um I've been looking at some numbers in the past few years, and they are very high.

So we've moved to uh ordering freight liners, which the state's been making, uh, you know, making the same move.

We're also uh diversifying the the actual truck itself.

We're uh putting Cummins engines in.

We're using Allison transmissions, we're using Eaton rear ends, and we're using uh all very high name brand, very generic um drivetrain components.

Plus, we're going with a hile body, uh, which is the uh all season body, and that way uh we won't run into the problems we have been running into.

So with our our dump bodies, 75% of our fleet of 60 uh 60 large heavy-duty plow trucks have our um equipped with bodies and the company's gone out of business, and we have no way of sourcing parts.

So you're gonna see this number go sky high if we don't do something soon.

So we've started, we've already moved to to do this.

We already have uh 15 trucks that have um all the uh components I was talking about previously.

So we're already making the move towards it and we're trying to move away from Mac since they now have Volvo engines in them that are not as reliable.

They use a lot of uh components under the trucks that were not stainless steel, so they're rotting away.

So there's a lot of reasons why we're moving out, and there's a lot of reasons why this this number is so high.

Understood.

Um is that all you have?

Okay, yeah, thank you.

Representative Finkel.

All right, thank you, Chair.

Uh, just a fast question.

If we're replacing the trucks, uh the money for the replacement in the current budget, or is it need to be in future budget?

I believe both.

So we uh we're looking into a few different options for purchasing.

Um there's some open-end lease options like we did with the uh with the pool fleet with uh with the enterprise, and that may soften the blow.

Um we're a very early stages of figuring it out, so there's nothing that we can bring to the table right now.

But the these vehicles were already purchased from uh by our last manager, him and I spec' them out ourselves.

Uh, we used like I said, we used a lot of mainstream name brand been here forever companies that don't cost so much money.

Um, and it's working so far.

Like we uh the freight liners we had zero problems with first year.

Bodies we had a couple problems, but they're still adjusting to the way that they're building them.

So it's understandable.

But we do have some proof now that it's working out.

Okay, thank you, and I yield.

Oh, and plus just one more thing.

Uh we we put in a pilot program for a wash bay, and we're having wash bay attendance and an exercise program, and our costs have gone like significantly down since then.

So we're gonna try to push that to be a permanent thing.

I don't know how well that's gonna work, but we're gonna try because it's saved us a ton of money this year.

Um, I could probably give you guys a couple numbers at some other time if you ask.

You can get my email.

Great.

Thank you very much.

I yield, Chair.

All right, thank you.

Uh Representative Politia.

Yeah, uh thank you, Chair.

Um, just really quick, I think for maybe for Dennis.

So just to clarify, this is uh an increase through the end of this fiscal year to pay out the outstanding invoices.

So it would be included in the fiscal year 2026, or are we just rolling into like next year's budget just for these invoices?

Or I guess the contract will roll next year, assuming there's more invoices, but just clarifying question.

Yeah, uh it should be enough to cover offer for this fiscal year.

Um there were a lot of outstanding invoices.

I took care of all the older ones already, I believe, uh although the the amount that we're requesting uh is uh pretty high, it's not exactly that much worth of invoices.

I think we have between um sixty to seventy thousand dollars uh worth of outstanding invoices, and from the the original contract agreement, I think our purchase order was at 80,000 thousand and I hadn't increased it to the full 99,999 thousand nine hundred and ninety nine dollars yet uh so this would cover everything for this fiscal year so coming in uh july we're uh we're on a clean slate with Gabrielle okay um and then I guess uh just a follow up in so do you have to renew a contract at that point for next year or is this kind of continue into next year like as open-ended or uh that is a good question I will follow up with you so I'll I'll reach back out when once I get back answered okay yeah thank you no um that that was all the questions I had I yield before thank you.

Or anybody anyone else I don't see any other hands.

I just had a couple of quick things because I know we have another another meeting so I'm not trying to rush it it's important but um Dennis just real quick if you and you're in my day job I do sourcing and supply chain so you're kind of speaking my language so it's kind of one of those things where my ears perk up when you when you go into a different if you're switching away from Mac and you're going into you said your freight liners and I don't know much about trucks but um are you are we gonna be handcuffed with OEM parts or there ability to do aftermarket for so that you you have some competition for parts going forward.

I I I'm not trying to put you on the spot I just those kind of questions that as we start to look at you know what our options are so that we're no longer a you know a sole source supplier for for parts I just something to kind of throw out there as we start looking at what what you know how we're gonna replace the Mac so I didn't know if you knew that or not if it like so sometimes it you know oh Mac trucks only use OEM parts so you can't you can't put something else in there but maybe freightliners you can get something aftermarket that's half the cost or something like that you know that is something we can do and we that's why we went with the uh companies we went but yeah I mean just in my personal like I for instance I know forklifts right and and you know Toyota or Raymond might sell you their parts uh but it you can get something aftermarket that's actually a better part for half the for half the cost sometimes just because you know the dealer is gonna you know they're gonna sell you their the dealer parts so anyway um you know but you know the most expensive truck is one that is not working and is you know sitting in in in the in the bay somewhere I like the idea of the wash bay facility I always you know I've always been told when I was in the army that uh you know a happy a happy a clean truck is a happy truck so all right moving truck the happy truck as well yeah we had we had uh two guys in the wash base and they're only there for the snow season just to make sure the salt doesn't you know get itself in there and solidify and then uh we had the exercise program through then and then through the springs we want to do spring summer and fall but I what I didn't want to go past 120 days with the season so um I wanted to gather some information to make sure we're going the right direction before we made made the request for a permanent solution.

But as far as the the uh parts sourcing we are working with a couple we're working with motor I don't know if you're familiar with motor they they've been around for a million years and they have a parts reference system that we can use for $57 a month and it will give you every part and every other every other manufacturer so if we have to buy an international part that fits on a Mac or if we have to buy uh a water pump that nap it's uh Napa sells it we'll have that opportunity we'll have that capability that was the whole reason for going with you know um yeah it gives you more options going going forward yeah and then we can be competitive you know it it'll be a competitive thing it won't be just you know Mac Mac Mac Mac like we've been doing and if you look at the numbers we spent four hundred and eleven thousand dollars in two years on 15 trucks which is an insane amount of money for those I agree.

I agree.

Hey, listen, I um if there are any more questions I I appreciate you guys coming in and and um you know teaching us uh you know how how you're how everything's working and everything.

So right now, I have seeing no hands.

The motion on the floor is to approve the item.

Uh we've had the discussion, discussion's over, so not seeing any other hands.

Well, we can go ahead and take this to a vote.

Um, I'm assuming we're all gonna approve, but if not, we will take it to roll call.

We'll try this by voice.

Um, all those in favor say aye.

All right.

And any opposed, no opposed.

So Sheila, at this time, I believe.

If my is it seven zero?

I think it's eight zero zero.

Representative Salas is on now.

That's right.

I'm sorry, Representative Salas.

Okay, uh question for the chair.

Did you want to ask if anyone wanted to abstain?

Oh, that yes, are there any abstentions?

If there are no abstentions, that would be eight zero zero.

And that would, and that would conclude this item.

So I just want to thank our guests for coming in and uh and all and your honesty and and your hard work, and we appreciate it.

Hopefully, this works out.

We can we can do a little bit better in the future going forward.

So thank you so much.

We will travel travel.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

All right, next we have uh review item item number two, opr 32.008.

This is review of the city snow removal process and snow emergency preparedness.

Now, as you remember uh from last uh meeting we had, we had the the first round of Director Turk that came in and talked to us and then put together a presentation that he sent out.

You should have it in your email.

So at this time, can I have a motion to take up item number two?

So move and a second.

So I can all right.

There is a motion and a second, and I will open it up to discussion.

And at this time, I will go ahead and give the floor to Director Turk.

How you doing, sir?

I'm good.

How's everybody tonight?

Good.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'll go ahead and give the floor to you, and uh and and I will be quiet.

Okay, just to recap in the last meeting.

There was a lot of snow removal questions, and I threw a lot of information at everybody.

So what I did was just this is a very simple, straightforward presentation.

My goal is for you guys to take this, save it on your computers, and if we get into another bad winter, this would be like your cliff notes when people bombard you guys with questions or complaints.

This should help you address them like quickly, unless they're more complicated than a simple they didn't plow my street thing.

This just gives you information that you can use to arm yourselves with with information so that you kind of know what's going on.

If you stay on the first slide, the two pictures there, the one on the right.

If this is the dome at Schofield Yard up in the north end of town, we have three domes.

One's up in Schofield, one's in the middle at Haig Avenue, and one is down right just north of Chapan on McGee Avenue.

This is a very beautiful dome.

It was built in the last 10 years.

I think the Amish people actually did the truss work on the inside.

So if you're ever up in that way and you can sneak in there and take a look, it's worth looking at.

The other one is a typical plow truck that we have, and I just want to point out you see how foggy blurry it is.

That's not bad camera.

That's typical conditions during the storm.

So I just want people to get an understanding.

It's it's not as simple as drive down street push to the right.

So okay, that's all.

Alright, just some simple facts.

320 miles of road in the city, 650 lane miles of road.

Which that's bad math because two times three twenty should be six forty.

But lane miles means how many lanes of travel are there?

Typically, you have one lane going one way, one lane coming the other way.

But as you guys all know, if you go to Summer Street or Bedford or Broad, you could have four or five lanes, and sometimes six.

If you count, you know, we have to plow the parking lanes as well.

So I added a few more miles on there just to incorporate all the lane lines within the city.

So if you think about it, it goes 650 lane miles, and we have to drive all those.

So just try to drive 650 once.

How long would that take you?

And that's like halfway to Florida.

So just it would take 12 hours or more to do that.

So that's what we're dealing with.

We got to hit every one of these lane miles multiple times every storm, and sometimes it's just salt, sometimes it's plowing.

And then for sidewalks, honestly, I don't have an exact number, but half of those roads have sidewalks, so it's probably a couple hundred miles if you count every sidewalk in the city.

Which again, that's not something the city can handle on its own.

That's why there's ordinances that have the whoever owns the property adjacent to that sidewalk to help deal with it.

Which I actually attached that ordinance to the end of this uh presentation.

Highways department, that's the main muscle for the roads to deal with it.

There's only 39 drivers for 34 plow routes, and then you're like, Well, why you got five extra people?

Because half the time somebody is missing, somebody is sick or injured, or out for personal reasons, or one of my guys is a national guardsman, he could be out deployed somewhere.

So I buffered a few extra drivers to make sure that we don't have any empty routes.

Uh, and then under that, two to three hours just to put salt in an entire route.

So one route.

Well, each map, each each plow route has a map for them just to salt, which is faster because they can kind of drive down the middle of the road, and the salt is flung in both directions and covers most of the road.

So just to throw salt in the route, two to three hours, and that's in perfect conditions.

That's usually we try to do that before it even starts to snow, so that we get ahead of it and it's not slippery when we're trying to deal with the initial snowfall.

If we do have to plow five to six hours to do a route, that's one time.

So 99% of the time they have to plow more than once.

So the questions are like, oh, you know, I woke up and they didn't hit my road.

Well, it snowed 24 inches.

If there's only six inches on your road, they probably went through your route three or four times already, but it takes six hours or five hours.

So if it's snowing one inch an hour, and they they just plowed your road, in five hours before they get back to you, there's gonna be five inches of snow on your road.

So it's not that you were neglected, it's just it takes time to drive these roads.

So that just gives a little perspective.

Signs and lines department, that is the department that does deal with sidewalks, but only it's very it's like a couple dozen locations, and it's it's weird little locations where the city owns the property, but it's not really a facility, so that the custodians don't deal with it.

For example, you have the train stations, Glenbrook, Springdale.

That's city property, but it's not really facility, so you don't have any custodians to deal with that.

These are the guys that go and deal with that.

You have a little parking lot on East Main Street by the Toyota dealer.

That didn't that didn't even exist like five years ago, so they created that parking lot.

Who's gonna deal with that?

That's gonna be signs and lines.

They plow the parking lot and they do the sidewalks adjacent to that property, and then there's a few other, there's like another dozen or two dozen locations, mostly around downtown that are just weird little spots that the city owns or is in a stretch of uh land where there's really no frontage to the nearby property, and these guys have to deal with it.

Uh the question that came up last time was, are we gonna hit all the crosswalks faster?

There's only seven workers.

That's assuming they all show up, they're all mandated to show up.

You know, that's part of the union contract.

If it snows and you're called for overtime, you gotta show up.

But again, if you're injured or sick, or some other personal reason that you can't make it, and we're down a person, so seven's the maximum, it is just not a lot of people, so we do as much as we can with what we have during the storm.

Meter technicians, recycling, traffic violation officers.

These are other parts of operation manpower that normally wasn't utilized that much.

But in this past winter, where we got hit with two major storms, we started thinking outside the box of our normal operations and started using them where we can.

Recycling, we've been using, they usually supplement highways because they have CDLs or they're used to driving trucks, so they help us on the roads.

Uh this year, because we do know the need for the crosswalks.

We tapped into the meter technicians, and they were running around all downtown.

You have those weird little islands all over the place where we'll plow the road, and the island in the middle of the crosswalk would get full of snow, and nobody was really attending to it after you know, days later, it's cold.

It just it was in a like a weird little limbo spot that nobody was addressing.

So we found uh a little more manpower that can go around dealing with these locations, uh while up you know, highways and signs and lines was doing the bigger stuff.

So we are trying to be more efficient with what we have and think outside the box and get more done.

Uh, wasn't there a sheet?

Oh boy.

Wasn't there a sheet that said uh purpose?

I guess not.

Whatever, we'll just go by a slide.

Okay, snow removal objective.

Here it is.

All right, to keep all roads passable.

That doesn't mean black, that doesn't mean perfect, that means sometimes three or four inches of snow.

It's as little as possible, but mainly passable for emergency vehicles.

This isn't so you people can run and go get milk in the middle of a blizzard.

This is an emergency period.

You only should be out there if you really really have to.

So our main objective, keep the roads clear so fire police EMS can get where they need to go in case of emergency, and then clean it up as fast as possible afterwards for everybody else.

So we're not gonna have black roads at all times.

Like I described with the five to six hour route plowing.

Even if we hit your road, by the time we get back to it, it could have three, four or five inches on it.

So it's it's just not physically possible.

Most vehicles can get through a few inches of snow, especially if they're all wheel drive.

If you're in a Honda Civic, you should plan to stay home.

If you're in a Subaru, you'd probably be able to get around.

So it depends on people have to factor in what they're driving, where they're driving to.

If it's hilly, that could be a huge difference than just flat ground.

You got to keep an eye on all that stuff.

In general, every time the mayor declares an emergency, she always asks me what should I tell people, and I say the same thing every time, stay off the road.

The residents should stay off the road, not just for their own safety, but the more traffic that's out there, the less efficient the plows can be.

If we have to start and stop and go around people, it just slows us down for everything.

So that's the number one piece of advice: stay off the road.

The less vehicles on the road, the more efficient the plows can be, less potential for accidents, which would tie up emergency responders and force them into the storm.

So you don't want to be in an accident and force the fire to drive out there in a blizzard, or ask the police to be in a blizzard, or God forbid it's an injury situation and EMS.

Now you're forcing all those people out into the storm, and usually if it's a bad storm, EMS fire police are gonna call highways and say, Hey, we want an escort on this road to get to this location.

Make sure the fire police or EMS is safe so they can get to the spot.

So now that plow truck is tied up doing that one specific route for EMS or whoever versus plowing the entire route.

So it just causes all kinds of efficiency problems.

We will never be more powerful than Mother Nature.

That seems like a silly statement, but when people say why didn't you do this better?

Because it's Mother Nature and 24 inches in one shot, it's just you're never gonna beat that.

We can do it efficiently and as quick as possible, but expectations need to be realistic.

And I said a little bit of how different storms are dealt with.

So most storms under six inches are fairly typical and can be handled with normal operating procedures.

It depends on how fast it falls.

Every storm's different, it could be an inch an hour, it snows in six hours, and we clean up in another six hours, and we're done in one day.

Sometimes the snow trickles, and it'll take like since six inches of snow could last for 20 hours, and it just drags on and on, and you're like, Oh, that sounds easier.

The problem is we'll go plow it, and then it you know, four hours later we gotta go plow it again, and another four hours, it just takes forever to end, which then now the cleanup starts, but typically amount-wise, six inches isn't a big deal.

Six to ten inches, you're getting a little heavy, it's gonna take us a little longer, it's a lot more cleanup to do, but again, we can fairly handle it well.

You get 10 or more, now we're we're so six to ten is like tickling emergency mode, ten inches or more, easily declared emergency, and what that means is there's emergency snow routes throughout town, it should be listed on the city's website, and it lists uh a group of roads, uh for example, like Hoich Street by the police station.

That's an emergency snow route.

What that means is if it's an official declared emergency, no parking is allowed.

The whole point is to free up all the parking to make the road as wide as possible to make sure that we can clean it as best as possible and keep that main vein in the city open at all times.

The signage is spread out a little more than normal signage, so you got to keep an eye on that when you're parking, but that's a a major part of the emergencies.

Next, please.

So this is a I try to write down the process so everybody can understand what we're thinking about during a storm or leading up to it.

So as soon as we get to fall, usually late October, November, we're we're watching the weather constantly.

And by we, I mean myself, the highways manager, the highways foreman, the highways office manager, we're all uh acutely attuned to the weather forecast, and it's not just one source.

We have multiple apps, we have a weather service, Connecticut weather, we're looking at multiple uh TV sources, news 12.

It's just trying to get it from each one of them.

Sometimes they're a little different, and we try to make our decisions based on all the best possible information.

Residents being updated.

Oh, another big thing that's been fairly recent is social media and the better website, and I believe they rolled out an Instagram account.

So, especially for all those savvy tech savvy residents.

They are getting more information about what the city's doing, and I know the city's working on that to help keep residents more informed during a storm so they can make their plans.

So, once an event is identified as imminent, by the way.

If you guys have any questions about each section, feel free to stop me and ask.

If you have a question about something, I can clarify it for you.

Once an event is identified as imminent, resources need to be defined.

By imminent, we mean that each of our weather sources has a very high probability, so that way we can start making plans and figuring out if we're gonna mobilize or something.

What I typically try to do, as I mentioned earlier, is let's say a storm is shown to start around 6 p.m.

I try to get everybody in by 4 p.m.

You're like, what are you doing in here early?

Well, as I stated before, it takes two to three hours to salt an entire route.

And what I learned in my tenure, what we used to do is just wait for the first snowflake.

Problem is everybody's on edge, we don't know when the hell that's coming.

And if you do that, and then we start to mobilize, half the guys live out of town.

It could take two hours to get everybody in their route, like get the trucks loaded in the route and start salting, and it could take three or four hours to salt everything.

In the meantime, people are driving around on snowy roads and possibly having accidents.

So if we can get out there two hours before, throw all the salt down on the route.

As the snow falls, it starts to melt instantly.

Unless it's a soupy super heavy heavy snow, it should maintain pretty good safety levels while it's snowing, and then all that cloud truck has to do is keep maintaining the route throughout the storm.

It also lets the drivers get in before it snows, and they're much safer on their travels into the city, or even if they live in the city.

It's much more efficient.

So, how many trucks are available?

We have about 50 trucks and 39 drivers.

Plus, I supplement it with a little more.

So we're in the 40s, and you're like, Well, why you got 50 if you only have 40 something drivers?

Because you need spares.

If a truck breaks down in a route, you don't want the driver to just get the truck back inside back to vehicle maintenance and then sit there and wait.

It might be fixed in an hour, might be fixed in in four hours, it might not get fixed at all during the storm.

So you need spares.

That's so you need to know is the entire workforce needed.

Sometimes it's not that often.

If you ever look at the elevations of Stanford, down by Chapan is sea level, that's why it floods a lot, and as you go north, it literally is like uphill all the way north to the New York line.

So everything above the merit is like in a different environment, and sometimes it'll be snowing up there and it won't be snowing at all downtown, or it snows everywhere, but it finishes downtown hours before it finishes up north.

So sometimes we see that the snow tracks above the merit, and we really don't need all 40 drivers.

We'll just bring in half.

That's not very common, but it happens.

So that's the first question.

Do we need everybody or not?

How many trucks are available?

Uh, like uh, just like Jason and Dennis mentioned before, they got in a little mechanical trouble with the Mac trucks.

Sometimes it's hard to get parts, and they're just not available for that storm.

So we got to make sure, see what our inventory is.

Make sure each driver has a truck.

The plow trucks that we use are the same trucks that we use for leaf pickup.

Uh, most of you guys should be familiar with our leaf pickup program.

That is a massive program.

It takes all of our employees to do it, and we have to hire like 30 seasonals to help us.

The problem is there's a leaf pickup mode for the truck where the conveyor belt and and the plow is off, and there's all kinds of setup that's done to be in leaf mode.

If we need it for snow mode, it takes like half a day to convert all the trucks back to snow mode.

So we really need to be on the ball in November and December with the forecast to make sure we're we have enough trucks ready to go when the snow hits, and there's only about a third of our fleet not used for leaf pickup.

So that's the kind of stuff we have to pay attention to.

What is the timing of the storm?

Can determine if traffic is a factor.

4 a.m.

garbage trucks, school buses typically are around 6 a.m.

So a weekday or weekend, big difference.

Weekends are a lot easier because there's a lot less people, and the garbage trucks typically don't run on the weekends.

Sometimes they do Saturdays.

We don't have to worry about school buses.

So timing is a big deal day or night.

Daytime usually is our friend, and it prevents freezing a little more than nighttime, especially in the winter.

Even though it could be like 28 degrees if it's sunny out, the asphalt will warm up and help us with some freezing issues.

Rush hour, off hours, it's always a big problem.

If it's rush hour, it's a lot harder to get around.

Try to get a layer of salt down before rush hour.

We keep an eye on that.

If it is gonna snow around 4 p.m.

We we've got to get out there by two and try and salt it so that all these people coming out of work aren't driving on the slick roads.

These are all factors we got to think about.

What are the weather conditions after the storm?

Is it below freezing?

Can the melted snow refreeze overnight?

May require additional salting.

So if all the snow is done, we need to keep an eye on the forecast for the temperature because this even if it's below freezing, the salt is melting the snow or ice and making it back into liquid form.

If it's below freezing, especially in the low 20s or less, that melted snow can refreeze.

So we have to think about that, push all the snow to the sides, and possibly have to go salt the whole entire route one more time to make sure it doesn't refreeze overnight when we go home.

The last thing you need is black ice everywhere.

Uh what is the possible duration of the storm?

You never know.

Could be one day of work or requires overnight stay, need to place pace plow truck drivers to avoid burnout and crashes.

These blizzards could last 30 hours straight, and nobody goes home until the storm is complete, and all the cleanup is complete.

They get a little break overnight from 11 p.m.

to 3 a.m.

That's it.

Otherwise, they're they're in the trucks and they're just pushing and working.

Most people don't know that either.

They always have that stigma of the lazy city worker, but these guys work until it's done, and the the standard operating procedures, we all go home together.

So if one guy finishes, let's say the south end has less snow than the north end, the south end guys don't just sit down and relax while the north end guys are struggling for four or five more hours.

You send them up north, say, ask people who needs it, even if everybody's has the same snow.

Sometimes your truck broke down a couple times and you're behind in your route.

So when we're wrapping up the cleanup, we always call out who needs help, and we'll we'll send people into the routes that are behind for whatever reason.

Extra snow, the truck broke down too many times.

So we always we all go home together.

It could last a day, it could be multiple days.

You never know.

How long will cleanup take once participation has ended?

This is important because what happens is we'll have a good storm overnight.

We're working till six in the morning with the snow, and then the sun comes up and the snow stops at like seven, and it's a beautiful sunny morning, even though it's 20 degrees outside.

People start popping out of their house and cleaning their driveways, and they're like, Why is my road a mess?

This it's not snowing anymore.

Well, we just started our cleanup, it's gonna take hours, but they see a calm, beautiful morning, and they're like, What are these guys doing?

So if it's just a short uh salt shot to uh eat some small amount of snow or ice, there's minimal cleanup, so it's a very small amount.

We're just throwing salt at it.

There's not much of a cleanup, and we're we're pretty much done when the precipitation stops.

Four to six inches.

We'll try pushing all the snow back to the curb line four to six hours after the storm ends.

So when you're plowing, you're going up one lane and down the other lane, and you're just doing that back and forth to keep the road open.

But when it's time for cleanup, you have to go up almost you gotta do one lane, come back to lane, and then you gotta do that lane to the curb line.

There could be an extra four or five feet.

We gotta push all that back.

So now there's a lot more plowing involved versus just the maintenance plow.

So that could take four to six hours, excuse me, of cleanup on a typical four to inch four inch to six inch storm.

So people are there shoveling their driveway, and then we come by on the nice sunny calm morning and push all this snow over, and they get all upset.

They're like, 'What the hell are they doing?

' They should have been done already.

It stopped snowing.

So my point is the job is not over just because of snow stop, it takes hours.

It could take six to ten hours to clean all that up and push it all.

And the point is you gotta push it all back to the curb line.

So if there's another storm, you don't have the snow keep building up on the snow banks and squeezing the roads.

I'm sure some of you have seen that where this past winter there's so much snow, the road just gets skinnier and skinnier.

So the whole point of pushing it back is to prevent that from happening.

When should a complaint be made regarding a street?

Four to six hours after.

It doesn't do us any good to say you missed my road when he's already working on it.

So if it's already calmed down and four to six hours later, you're getting a complaint about a missed road.

That's probably legitimate.

Somebody might have just missed it, and that's when you send a fix it request or send me an email or something like that.

That's probably legit.

But if it's only an hour after it stops snowing, it we'll take the complaint and be like, okay, I just didn't get there yet.

So there's really no point to it.

I'm not gonna say, okay, we'll go to that street now.

That's not efficient.

There's each driver has the exact same route every storm, and what that does is it that allows them to learn the most efficient route, like go down Newfield and then turn right on this road.

And and they learn the circles to be efficient, they're not gonna break that efficiency route to jump to a road just because somebody complained about it.

It has to be a legit complaint.

Otherwise, we're just hurting everybody else in the route for that one complaint.

So if you get one, see when it's stopped.

If it's four to six hours later, that's probably legitimate.

Any questions so far?

I do have one uh director turkey for the complaint process.

Is it is it fix it?

Is it a text message?

Is it I I mean, I don't know how we're funneling what's what what makes it what what's the most efficient way of of handing out the complaint?

I think fix it our our foreman's very good about keeping an eye on that, and we can literally print them out and use it as the work order.

You could try to chase me or somebody else, but I think you want to go through fix it because that puts it on official record, and let's say we missed the fix it, and somebody says, Hey, I sent that in and you didn't get it.

If it's just an email or something, I could just say I didn't look at my emails during the storm.

But if it's on fix it, that's like the official complete system, and we are checking it in real time.

It's easy for us to do.

So I would say if they call you and you know they're capable, say, please put that and fix it.

If there may be an older person or someone just not that familiar, you could do that for them.

And worst case scenario, you can email or call.

You know, if it's like an immediate danger, like uh my mom needs to get out on the road to go to the doctor or something like that, then you could try like one of you guys called the office, but the best route efficiency-wise, is just put in the fix it system.

All right, this spreadsheet is the spreadsheet that we create during every winter, and you could see the event, the date it happened, the start time, the end time, the tons of salt we used, how much money that cost us based on the the uh cost of salt in that year, uh the amount of snow, and then we added the notes column at what kind of storm are we dealing with.

So you can see here we had 16 events, but what's unusual about this year is we had that continuation thing, uh on number 10.

You see four different continuations.

Usually when it's a continuation, that's like an overnight because it's not that much snow.

But on number 10, that was the I think the second big blizzard.

No, that was the first one.

Where am I?

Where's the snow?

Yeah, that was the first one.

So number 10 was the 18 inches we got, and then we just kept doing snow removal night after night after night, and then on the the last one, the 24 inches, so we had 68 inches.

I think last year we had maybe like 30, and then the two years before that, we only had five events each year, and it was only like 10 inches.

It was ridiculous how light our winters have been recently.

But this shows you everything that we're doing and the hours and the work putting into it.

We spent over a million dollars in salt, which I don't think you guys are reps yet, but I had to come in for salt appropriation money because that was over my normal budget, which we got lucky.

We have three domes, and because we were below freezing for so long, see people forget all these nuances.

We were below freezing for like two months straight, which was the problem why the snow wasn't melting.

What happened was Morton Salt, which is our supplier, stopped delivering in like December or January, they just stopped, and if our three domes were not full and maxed out at the beginning of the season, we would have started running out of salt, and I finally got it out of them.

I go, What the hell's going on?

Is it a shortage?

What is the problem?

And it wasn't a lack of salt, their barges were frozen somewhere and they couldn't move them, so it was an operational thing, it had nothing to do with the amount of salt that was available, and it didn't free up till like freaking March.

So we were scraping the back of the dome walls, which we haven't done in like 10 years, so it was a very sketchy, scary season.

But we came out of it and we're literally topping off the domes right now to max them out so that we're ready for next year.

We might not use much of the salt, we might use all of it.

You never know.

That's why you gotta be ready.

Any questions on the spreadsheet?

Yeah, I'm sorry to take up your time.

When you say, just to clarify, when you say a snow event, we may not actually get snowfall, but because there's snow operations going on at that time, you're just you're removing snow, you might be salting from a previous storm.

You guys consider that a snow event?

Well, we put event because it might not have any snow.

If it's just icing, then it's just ice, so we don't write the word snow because it might not have any snow.

It could be a ice-only event.

Right, right?

But like let's say you you in in January, January 27, 28, 28, 29, you have this big big snow event.

That's the 17 and a half inches.

You're removing snow the next two or three, four days.

You consider that's just 10 continued.

So it's just you're working, but it's just it's part of 10.

All right, so I see what you're saying.

So, like yeah, that's part of 10 because we're just doing the snow removal from that event.

That's why it's a continuation, okay.

But like item number 13 is a snow event.

You may not really get measurable amount of snow, but you might be salting because there might have rained and it might be freezing that day or something like that.

Yeah, it's it can be any any icy or snowy condition that causes us to mobilize.

That's an event.

Alright, so you're it's an event.

I think that's good to remember.

So all right, I appreciate it.

It doesn't, it's not always snow involved.

I get it, so that's why we use the general term event.

Thanks.

I did have one question.

Sorry, so uh representative Didalo, go ahead.

Yeah.

Um I kind of did have like, so especially those bigger storm events during the event.

Are you going toward, you know, you have your what was it, 39 routes, um, or 33?

I can't remember number.

I know it's either 34.

Darn it.

Um, are you guys going during like you know, those bigger ones, the 17.6 and those 23.1?

Are you only like let's say only doing Newfield Avenue, only doing Strawberry Hill Elm Street towards the hospital, or are your guys going the full route during those storms?

Are you only keeping those major arterials open?

That is a very good question, and you're very acute because you're right.

If it is snowing, let's say two inches an hour in the blizzard, and we know the main in two hours is gonna have four inches on it.

You're right.

We will stick to the main roads and the collectors to keep that as available.

The dead ends, they're gonna be last definitely, and then the side roads, unless they're like an important collector and we know it's like a route that a fire truck would have to take from the fire station or police station or something.

Yes, we will focus on the mains because it doesn't do any good to clean a cul-de-sac or a minor side road if they're six inches on the main road because you're not gonna get anywhere.

So, yes, if it gets real bad and visibility's bad, and they they will just stay focused.

But the moment that it lightens up and we can get back into those side roads, that's that's what we do.

Yeah, I need to have one more if that was okay.

Um what's the max because I'm sure there's with the CDLs a max amount of time that these drivers can be on the road.

So what's the max at like okay, hey, they've been out, I don't know, maybe it's 12 hours, that they have to come and have you know a four-hour rest, you know.

There is a maximum, but that only applies to like long haulers.

That's not for emergency CDL drivers for a city.

We had this debate because in the contract they used to say after 16 hours, they get a six hour break.

And I'm like, how the hell does that work?

We can't not do anything for six hours, or you're telling me I have to stagger the workforce, which means I'll never have enough people to deal with the whole city.

And when you looked into it, those mandates are only for long haul drivers, they're not for emergency CDL drivers that work for a city.

So to answer your question, there is no limit other than the physical limit of that individual.

That's we do try to always do the same breaks, and that's not just about physical, it's mental.

You can maintain yourself a little more when you know the break is coming at 11.

And we do 11 to 3 a.m.

because it 99 is percent of people shouldn't be on the road at those hours anyway, whether it's snowing or not.

And then if it is really snowing and 99.9% of people are out, and it gives them uh something to look forward to or work towards.

There's actually a whole break cycle, if this then that.

So we only take that break if it starts snowing or we mobilize after 6 p.m.

No, before 6 p.m.

So let's say it starts snowing at 10 o'clock at night.

We're not gonna take a break at 11.

Because we and what we would do is warn these guys days leading up to it, say, hey, it's probably gonna be a late night start.

Make sure when you go home at 3 o'clock, you get some rest because when we come in at 10, we're not stopping.

So those breaks are only if we start earlier in the day, and they really need to break.

If not, that means we can plan our rests out.

We come in at 10 pm, we just keep going, and then their next break cycles from 11 a.m.

to 1 p.m., which is in between rush hours, which again you should have lesser traffic on the road.

So if we started like 10 p.m., we would have like maybe a little informal breakfast break at 5-ish, and then an official break at 11.

Did that answer your question?

Yeah, I think I was helpful.

I think getting a better idea about how that break cycle works.

Is that something that could be communicated?

You know, out like, hey, okay, people are going on break, so if you see less plows, here's why.

You know, is that something or like okay, like an update just on the operations?

That's something that's communicated more.

You can say whatever you want.

I don't know how what kind of feedback you're gonna get.

Like, I don't care if they're on break, put them back to work.

I'll pay their salary.

Man, man, I don't know if you want to start that conversation.

I mean, especially at those hours, who the hell's up at those hours needing to know if they're on a break or not?

Well, that's what I was trying to get at was if it's a cycle, right?

There's gonna be time.

So I mean you're trying to aim for that 11 p.m.

to 3 a.m.

Are they always on that that they're tried to be the preferred break, but certain storms and timing.

See, that's that's the thing.

It's not a it's not gonna be every storm.

If it started, even if it started at 8 p.m., most likely we're not breaking at 11.

So I don't want to give people that cycle, and then we're not living up to it because it's different.

Every storm is so different, even though you're like, well, you're just plowing, but the logistics are are all over the place, depending on manpower and machine and conditions outside.

If it's below 17 degrees, we have to add a calcium chloride mix to our salt, because normal salt doesn't work too well below that degree, so that could slow us down.

I I wouldn't want to advertise generalities because they don't always work.

If you know what I'm saying, yeah, thank you.

I yield.

That's why I'm trying to give you guys all this basic information, because it is kind of complicated, and there's no simple answers for every event that you could just tell people and it and give them expectations, because they're all different.

So I'm just trying to give you how many logistics are involved and how hard it is.

So when they complain, you could say, I understand, and if it's in that four to six hour range, you could deal with it, but otherwise they just gotta be patient and let us do our thing.

So as we saw on that event 10, we had snow removal, and I I didn't even realize the amount of snow we were moving.

So this is after one night, and that's my office manager Maria down there to give perspective of how big this snow mound is after one night.

That's like 20 feet tall and probably I don't know, 150 feet long and probably about 30 feet wide.

So that that's crazy.

So our official storage site is at West Beach, just off of Chapan Avenue.

Uh that is the one that we have approval from deep, and what you do is you put a filter fabric and hay bales around the catch basins.

So as this thing melts, it'll filter out any debris or sand or dirt that was in these piles, you know, that just gets picked up from the road.

This was day number two.

Now you can see my car there, and now this it's double the size.

That's a lot of snow.

So just to give you guys perspective, and then this was after multiple days.

Now we got two mountains.

This was as big as the garage at highways.

It's just a massive amount of snow.

So just to give perspective on what we were moving, and most of that was just downtown.

So it was a crazy winter.

That's between the two major snow events that we had.

I don't know if these are every single ordinance that has to do with snow, but these are the main ones.

So this just so you have a record of it to remove removal of snow and ice from sidewalks by a butting owners or occupants.

So it basically says if you live next to a sidewalk, the city expects you to maintain it.

There's a let's see.

If such fall of snow or ice or such freezing or water or moisture is in the daytime, it shall be removed with within 12 hours of the ceasing of such fall or freezing.

So they give people 12 hours to do a sidewalk.

I told you we do a whole snow route in six, so that shows you how efficient we are.

And then, or if such fall or freezing is in the night time before 10 a.m.

of the succeeding day.

So that's the basic rule.

No owner, occupant, or condominium association or person in charge of property, budding and sidewalk, shall be liable for a say for citation for a violation of the section for snow plowed from the street onto said sidewalk by a plow operated by or contracted to the city of Stanford.

Basically, if we're buried in their sidewalk, that doesn't mean they're not responsible to do it, it just says we're not going to give you a ticket because we just buried your sidewalk.

So you basically have more time to deal with it.

Deposit of snow and ice in the streets.

This is important, not so much for private residents.

But if you drive around downtown after a good snowstorm, and the next morning as the sun's coming up, you'll see these contractors cleaning parking lots, and they're pushing them all into the street.

The nice ones try to push it across the street, sometimes into islands, but they'll leave that residue.

Some of them just dump it right in the damn travel lane.

They don't care.

This is a problem, and we we gotta try and get the police or the enforcement officers to go out there and bust their chops because our guys are getting the roads black, making them nice, and then they just smear this stuff all over the road, and it it could freeze up again and cause problems.

So there is a rule about that, uh, maintenance of public areas.

Uh I highlighted the yellow, it says most must remove the ice or snow from sidewalks and exterior stairs within 24 hours after the end of participation.

I think this is like for a big condo areas that like our full block, or those you know, those row homes of two-story apartments where there's a lot of sidewalks that are not on public property, and it's just saying if you have a lot of people that walk around your sidewalks, you gotta maintain them.

I believe that what that's saying.

I'm not a lawyer, but that's what I'm thinking.

So here's a summary.

There is a lot of miles of of salt to plow, a limited amount of manpower, a limited amount of equipment, which for us, we have a lot of stuff.

You go to other towns, they got like 10.

We got 50, so we got a pretty big uh fleet and a pretty good manpower for us, and we're pretty good at it, but again, we we can only do so much.

Planning and patience from residents would be helpful.

A lot of people don't even know it's gonna snow, which I don't know how you fix that.

But they're like, Oh, I didn't know it was gonna snow today, and then they're they're doing errands in the snow instead of planning ahead, getting the food, whatever they need, and just chillaxing watching Netflix at home and letting us do the job.

So knowing about the storm is a big deal, and I think the city's trying to help get that word out there better with the Instagram and other social media.

Uh Stanford has a very high Stanford for uh standard for snow or ice cleanup.

So, like I said earlier, half my guys live out of town.

So imagine working in Stanford for two days straight, making the roads perfect, and then you go home exhausted, and your own road at home wasn't even plowed yet, and you're like, what the hell are these guys doing?

We just spent two days working, and they're still four inches on my road, and it stopped snowing 12 hours ago.

So our standards pretty high, and we try to live up to it.

Uh, like I said, yeah, that standard has been met for many years and will be continued to be met with your help for years to come.

The irony is I grew up in Florida, so what do I know about snow plowing?

But luckily for me, when I got here, there was older gentlemen that were the supervisors that they've been doing it for 30 years, and they they taught me a lot.

I learned a lot by watching, I tweaked things.

We actually had when I got here, 44 snow routes and 28 drivers.

That's that's bad math to me.

That doesn't make sense, and we used to have to borrow garbage truck drivers, and and the other problem was they were smaller routes because they were split up more.

But imagine you cleaned your route, you made it perfect, and I call you on a radio to say hey, hey Bob, go do uh Route 17.

Nobody's touched it yet, and now you gotta start from scratch in a buried route.

Mentally, you're gonna be destroyed, you're already tired.

It was it was exhausting.

So like halfway through my tenure, we had a consultant for free from Westcog that redesigned all our routes, and he said, What are you looking for?

I said, Well, I got 34 drivers at the time, that's what I had.

I said, make 34 routes, let's see what you come up with.

And they did that, and we on a lighter winter, we said, screw it, let's implement it, see what happens.

And the routes were bigger, but now they were all even.

We had some guys, it would take them seven hours to do their route, and another guy would be done in three hours.

And they would all pick on the guy like he was lazy.

And when the consultant came in, they they actually made that guy's route smaller because he had a much bigger route than everybody else.

So now they're all fairly equal.

Their goal was to make it drivable within five hours.

And it can't be perfect because it's not an exact grid, but we've made things a lot more efficient.

We've got new equipment, vehicle maintenance is always they come in with us, they back us up, whatever we need to get the job done.

The parks guys supplement us, the recycling helps.

So we have a great team.

I think we do great work, and I plan on keeping that standard that high, at least in my tenure.

And if you guys ever really have an issue out there and you need help or somebody's in trouble, always email or call.

But in general, the idea is people know snow is coming, get your munchies, get your food, line up your movies, go home, relax, and just let us do our thing, and it should be good by the next day.

That's pretty much it what I got, guys.

If you got any questions, let me know.

I appreciate it, Director Turk.

Um, are there any questions from the floor?

I uh I just wanted to say thank you so much to to direct, but I I think we've had a couple of really good questions and it was a good discussion.

I think we we learned a lot.

I don't see any hands.

I know we had another meeting and a couple people had to jump over, but um if I don't see any hands, I uh we'll go ahead and just say thank you for for putting that together.

I know I know you put some effort into it and and I appreciate it.

So um because it's a it's a review item.

Uh this is for the committee.

We it just goes into as a report made, so there's no vote.

Uh it's just a discussion, and then and then it ends.

So that being said, I just want to say thank you to to Director Turk and and all your hard work and tell your guys uh on behalf of all of us, thank you for for everything that they that they do every day.

Well, my intention was this uh slideshow was meant to be shared, so please feel free to send this to all the board members, not just your committee.

And if they anybody has any specific questions, feel free to email me.

But the whole point was this was a guide for all you reps.

I know you guys get a lot of phone calls and get bombarded all the time.

So this is just like a cliff notes to help you answer any questions.

And if anybody has any questions about the slides, you know, especially outside this committee that didn't hear this, uh just have them email me.

Um I'll be happy to answer it.

We'll do.

And I appreciate it so much.

And we'll we'll put it in the deck for for newcomers as well, so that uh they they can get caught caught up to speed and all that um to learn about your operation.

So with that being said, I appreciate it and um and that's all we have.

And other than that, uh Sheila, that's all I have for this committee.

And if nobody else has anything else, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

And there's a second.

Right now I have 7 42 p.m.

And we will go ahead and adjourn.

And thank you guys, and we'll see you at our next meeting.

Take care.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Bye.