Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante cracked the whip yesterday, pushing borough mayors to do better when it comes to snow removal.
“I will not accept, under any pretext, inadequate execution," reads the letter, addressed to all 18 borough mayors, and signed by Mayor Plante. "Montrealers expect, with reason, to receive quality and flawless service on the whole of the territory."
The Sud-Ouest and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve boroughs are still struggling with the clean-up from last week’s dump of snow, and sidewalks in many areas remain slippery and dangerous.
“We can all understand that the weather has been difficult, but this is a winter city, and the city is trained to provide services of this sort,” said Marvin Rotrand, city councillor for Snowdon, in an interview with CJAD 800, in which he called the mayor’s letter nothing more than a publicity stunt.
“There is a lack of concern at the top, and an after-the-fact letter isn’t going to change anything,” he said. “She should have been in the file days ago. She should have been able to stand up in council when the opposition asked questions on Monday.”
Ville Saint-Laurent borough Mayor Alan DeSousa, who received the letter on Tuesday evening, similarly suggested the source of Mayor Plante’s frustration is her own team’s inadequate management of the snow clearing operations, not her borough counterparts.
“Every mayor and every councillor on the island of Montreal is diligently doing their best,” DeSousa said. “But if they’re being burdened, slowed down, or delayed, often in many occasions it’s the center city.”
Montreal City Hall instructs the boroughs about when they can carry out their removal operations, and both DeSousa and Rotrand blame the sub-par performance this winter on centralized missteps and timing errors.
“There have been too many incidents,” Rotrand said. “There hasn’t been firm management this winter and it repeats some of the problems we had last winter.”
In a written statement, opposition borough mayors representing Pierrefonds-Roxboro, Saint-Leonard, and Montreal North also blasted the letter, saying her attempt to blame the boroughs for the snow removal mess is off target.
Mayor Plante defended sending out the letter.
"It's not about targetting and saying this one is good, this one is bad. It's much more complex than that," Plante told reporters.
"I want to make sure there's no big differences between boroughs."
Plante said she just wanted to see to it that everyone is on the same page.
"It is also a constant conversation with boroughs who are responsible for their sidewalks to say, "Should we change some practices?" Because when there's ice, when there's rain, after snow, before snow, anyway, we need to adapt," said Plante.
The city announced that another snow removal operation in all boroughs would begin tonight.