Bangor public works crews are optimistic about their ability to remove snow quickly this winter as the department enjoys its highest staffing and equipment levels in years.
The city now has 43 plow operators and just seven staff vacancies compared with the 11 vacancies it was grappling with at this time last year, said Aaron Huotari, Bangor’s public works director.
Those additional employees also have new street and sidewalk plows this winter, putting the public works department “in the best shape I have experienced for winter operations since I started three years ago,” Huotari said.
While it will still take crews time to clear snow from city streets and more than 80 miles of sidewalks, Huotari hopes the additional staffing will create an improvement from last winter, when it sometimes took a week or more to plow sidewalks. This forced pedestrians to walk in the street when sidewalks weren’t cleared and gave plow operators little rest between storms.
The city’s new plow operators were also able to get more training than last year’s recruits, Huotari said. This is because the city takes on construction workers who are laid off for the winter to clear city streets and sidewalks.
Last year, construction companies held onto their personnel until late November, Huotari said, giving the city little opportunity to guide them through their route before the first plowable snow of the season arrived.
“They’re up to the challenge,” Huotari said of the new plow drivers. “I’m feeling pretty optimistic about this winter. We have a good crew with a few new people who have developed a sense of teamwork and camaraderie.”
When plowing streets, each driver has a route that takes between three and four hours to complete, Huotari said.
The city also added two street plows that spread salt, bringing the city’s fleet to 16 with an additional nine large plow trucks that don’t spread salt. Crews also have access to six smaller plow trucks.
The Bangor city council also granted the public works department $400,000 in pandemic relief funding to purchase two new sidewalk plows. Previously, the city had only five sidewalk plows that were prone to breaking down.
Huotari said the city only has six sidewalk plows currently — all of which have names — because they’re still waiting for the final new plow to be delivered.
The department also reordered which sidewalks get plowed first to prioritize the city’s schools, Huotari said. This will prevent students from needing to walk in the streets when sidewalks aren’t clear.
Huotari added that the city is piloting a plan to clear downtown sidewalks this winter. This is a shift away from the city’s previous policy that required downtown business owners to clear the sidewalks in front of their establishments.
This will likely take time for crews to accomplish, Huotari said, since downtown sidewalks present more challenges, such as low-hanging awnings that machines need to avoid and doors that provide basement access to businesses that can’t support the weight of a sidewalk plow.
“We’re in the learning phase right now,” Huotari said.