LISTOWEL – Recent reports to North Perth and Perth County councils remind us of the difficulties linked to the winter season we have only recently emerged from.
North Perth Council got its first look at the Winter Operations Plan for the 2025-26 winter season, at the June 8 meeting.
The plan details how the municipality manages winter operations across nearly 650 km of roads. According to the report, North Perth manages:
– 158 lane km of urban roads;
– 320 lane km of rural paved roads;
– 168.5 km of rural gravel roads, and;
– 41.8 km of sidewalks and multi-use paths; and municipal parking facilities and operational yards.
According to the report’s highlights: 179cm of total annual snow accumulation fell; there were 65 total winter event response days; 2,825 tonnes of sand and 1,400 tonnes of salt were applied.
The total accumulated snowfall was 21.8 per cent more than the five-year average, according to CanadaWeatherStats.ca, however, the plan also indicates that 8.6% less than the five year average of salt was applied to roads.
The plan states the winter maintenance period commences on November 15 each year and concludes on March 31 the following year. Hours of operation during this period are 3 a.m. to 8 p.m.. During the winter maintenance period, staff patrol roads two times per day (including weekends and Statutory Holidays). The patrols occur at 2 a.m. and 4 p.m.. The purpose of the patrol is to monitor and record weather and road conditions as well as mobilize winter maintenance operators and equipment should a winter event be observed, and a winter event response is required.
According to the plan, a routine patroller for the early morning patrol shift is assigned, typically starting the call-out procedure by 3 a.m., if applicable. Standard operations are available Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.. An afternoon shift runs Monday to Sunday 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.. The afternoon shift oversees the completion of the afternoon winter patrol and operations. Outside these hours, a full-time employee is on-call on a 24-hour basis, from Friday to Friday.
Coun. Marc Noordam asked if there was a difference in weekend patrol compared to previous seasons?
“The reason I ask is, I know it was very much an old school winter last year, but some of our rural roads really lacked weekend maintenance service,” he said. “I know on a few occasions we had a few vehicles stuck mid-day on some of our paved side roads, and a lot of that snow was from the previous night. When I would ask an operator if they were called out that morning, they would say ‘no.’ I also received a fair bit of complaints from rate payers, as well, on weekends I got quite a few messages and phone calls, so I’m wondering if staff is going to maybe do something a little different on our weekend services?”
Director of Infrastructure Services Matt Ropp said weekend patrols in the early morning and mid-day “haven’t changed in my tenure at the municipality.” He added that the only change was a dedicated person working on the early morning weekend patrol.
“But in response to some of the questions around level service, that’s wholly decided by this council of what they’d like to see for levels of services on our road, and the plan doesn’t deviate from that,” Ropp said.
“In that report, it also defines our level of service does end at 8 p.m. every night, so if there’s snow that comes down after 8 p.m., we’re not back out there till the next morning, you’ll see roads that you know can look like no one’s been out there, but it’s falling within our defined levels of service.”
Noordam said, “I think if we go into this season, and it’s kind of the same thing, I think we’re going to have to change something up, looking towards next season.”
North Perth Mayor Todd Kasenberg asked if there is any plan to “re-evaluate the processes and procedures so that we may become continually more effective.”
Ropp said “We can definitely look into that. We’re trying to build consistency, so it’s the same type of reaction seven days a week, not just necessarily on the weekend or during Monday to Friday time frames.”
Coun. Allan Rothwell said he appreciated seeing the metrics of materials used, and kilometres covered.
“The only metric, of course, which wasn’t there was where our budget was in terms of the total amount that was spent,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll get to that at budget time, but I think we knew there was a number of challenges that we had, not just the number of snow days, but also receiving materials, specifically salt, and as to whether, like, the impact that had on us.”
Kasenberg concurred, saying, “It certainly was a hard winter and … I heard at the county the same distress that has happened there with regards to winter maintenance.”
Perth County
At the June 4 Perth County Council meeting in Stratford, it was shared that winter maintenance overages are expected to break even.
Senior Financial Analyst/Deputy Treasurer, Daniel Hubbard presented the first quarter financial variances.
According to his report, most operating expenses are tracking as expected (at 25 per cent of their annual budgets), but the winter maintenance budget is at 61 per cent of its annual budget. This is after an additional $600,000 was added to that budget. Despite the overage, Hubbard said the winter maintenance budget is still expected to fall within budget.
“As of March 31, 61% of the budget has been spent due to the harsh winter conditions earlier in the year,” he said. “Based on the count of the five-year average, about 40% of annual winter maintenance costs occur in November and December, and using that trend, we are forecasting year-end expenses will fall on budget.”
Executive Director of Public Works, John McClelland said this is great news.
“I don’t want to rain on Daniel’s parade,” he said. “By any means, it is great news that we are projecting to be on budget with winter maintenance in 2026. I’ll just maybe temper those expectations a little bit for you … We had increased winter maintenance on the 2026 budget by about $600,000. Some of that we anticipated at this point in time that we’d be projecting a surplus in winter maintenance, thereby feeding our winter maintenance reserves. So that was the intent by increasing our winter maintenance budget in 2026. However, as we all know, winter wasn’t all that kind to us between the months of January and April, and so expenses are higher than that, and again, we were hoping to be feeding the reserve, but what we’re projecting now is that reserve will remain at $0 but at least we won’t be looking at other reserves to fund the debts.”
By Kelsey Bent, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Jun 26, 2026 at 07:00
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