By Chad Feehan / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Frosty Fest was a huge success despite some weather issues, councillor Jim Lock reported to council on Tuesday.
“It certainly didn't dampen the spirits of our volunteers, our Frosty board, and certainly all of our residents and non-residents who came out,” Locke said.
A deluge of snow and wind did cancel multiple events in the middle of last week week, like Thursday’s Bingo Bonanza, and Wednesday’s dinner theatre event with Spirit of Newfoundland.
Mayor Dave Aker said the two days of events that were cancelled were insured.
“Even though the events didn’t go ahead, it didn’t create great losses for the festival and therefore perhaps the City,” he said
When not hampered by bad weather, events like the Winter Block Party, Breakfast with Frosty, and the Snowball Dinner and Dance went off without a hitch.
Of course, last week's snow affected more than just the festival, as councillor Mark Rice pointed out. The primary focus is snow clearing and ice control as work continues with snow removal from city streets, sidewalks, cul-de-sacs, fire hydrants, and islands.
“Staff have been quite busy the last week, and they’re going to be pretty busy I’m sure for the next couple of weeks,” Rice said.
Due to heavy use over the past week, some vehicles in the City’s fleet are in need of repair, he added.
“We’ve got maintenance crews and repair technicians in 24/7 repairing that,” Rice said.
Director of Public Works Glen Dollimont outlined the work underway.
chimed in with his own assessment of the city’s snowy situation.
“As of this afternoon, we’ve had most, if not all the main drags blown back to what we think is satisfactory, and we've started to reach out into some of the secondary (streets) and neighborhoods to do some blowback in that area,” Dollimont said. “We have a crew doing fire hydrants which should be completed in the next couple of days… We’re removing snow from cul-de-sacs. We generally start on our smaller cul-de-sacs first because of the volume of snow in them. We’ll continue with that process 24/7 until we are well ahead of any predicted snowfall in the near future.”
Dollimont was, however, concerned with the mild temperatures and rain forecasted for later this week, and said catch basins will be cleared to deal with any significant rainfall.
While the city's skating rinks are closed, Locke wondered if residents would be within their rights to take a shovel and broom to the ice themselves.
“By all means,” said Dollimont.
Locke also brought up the tricky situation of private plows leaving a mess on the road after clearing residential driveways.
“It is a concern,” he said. “But it’s difficult because there are many people in our city who are unable to clear their own driveway so they rely on these pickup trucks and contractors that are clearing the snow. I understand in this circumstance under the extreme snow we've had, these trucks aren’t able to actually deposit the snow at a higher elevation.”
Aker, meanwhile commented on the observable phenomenon of Frosty Festival coinciding with stormy weather.
“This is the time of the year when the word Frosty collides with the word snow,” he said, “and unfortunately many go all out for the FF and it ends up creating what we call the Frosty Flu.”
