About 2,900 Red Deerians were ticketed for failing to remove their parked vehicles from the street during the recent residential snow clearing.
This is up by about 900 tickets from last year.
“Nearly 3,000 tickets is a lot of tickets,” said the city’s public works manager Greg Sikora, who can’t exactly pinpoint why there was an increase from the 2,000 tickets in 2017 and the 2,700 tickets issued in 2016.
The city always plows residential neighbourhoods during the day, Monday to Friday, when there are the fewest number of vehicles left out on the street, he noted. And Sikora added it’s the third or fourth winter Red Deerians were able to sign up for a municipal notification system that leaves a recorded message warning their residential streets are about to be cleaned, so vehicles must be removed.
Although the city put up fewer ‘no parking’ signs this year, there were radio, newspaper, as well as website announcements, to remind motorists to take necessary efforts to check out when their streets were due for clearing, said Sikora.
A few large notification signs were put up at the entrance of some neighbourhoods, but Sikora said there’s an expectation for residents to know their snow zone and find out when their streets will be plowed.
People who aren’t comfortable going online to reddeer.ca can always call the city, he added.
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Some residents have complained about the tickets, which cost $50 if paid by an early deadline date but are otherwise $85. Sikora believes they now know what they need to do next year.
He encourages Red Deerians to sign up on the city’s website reddeer.ca for the automatic notification system. Only about 10,000 out of 40,000 households have, so far.
He believes plowing is largely over for the winter, unless there’s an unexpectedly heavy snowfall during a prolonged cold patch in March or April.
This year’s effort is on target, budget-wise, costing about $2.4 million since January – or half the $4.96 million city council allocated for 2018.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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