Members of Brampton council will take part in a council workshop in June to figure out where and why the city’s snow removal services fell short last winter, and what they can do to avoid similar issues moving forward.

“From council’s perspective, it’s not a secret that this year we found the snow removal service not to be up to par. As a result, we’ve requested a workshop,” said Wards 3 and 4 Coun. Martin Medeiros.

“The first snowfall, I found our response to be a lot better than in previous years, but it deteriorated consecutively the snowfalls after. I heard loud and clear from my residents,” he said.

Medeiros said both members of council and the city received numerous calls throughout the winter months from residents who sometimes were waiting days for their areas and streets to be cleared.

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“We hear horror stories of residents who were snowed in, that they couldn’t get out of their driveway … With the snow removal service, they will pile up snow in front of people’s driveways. Especially with seniors, they can’t leave their houses. I’ve had residents tell me they couldn’t go to work.

“I wouldn’t say this has been frequent, but there’s been a couple (of) really bad snowstorms where people were stuck up to a couple of days,” he added.

The council workshop is scheduled for June 10. Members of council and city staff will discuss issues such as service responsiveness and timeliness.

According to Medeiros, the session will also cover topics like procurement, contractor responsibilities, service delivery and the overall quality of service.

“Many of the new councillors, they’ve had a lot of questions and we’ve had a lot of questions,” he said.

“Essentially, we want to see considerable improvement. We want to see better responsiveness from the contractors.