Mayor Gregor Robertson defended Tuesday his prolonged absence from the city over the past month as Vancouverites dug out from a heavy snowfall and were forced to negotiate icy streets and sidewalks.
In his first news conference since he left on a holiday in mid-December, the mayor said he took a vacation outside Vancouver but kept in touch with city manager Sadhu Johnston about the city’s so-called snow fight plan.
“We were in constant contact and dealing with the situation,” Robertson told reporters at Waterfront station following a news conference related to transit improvements. “I was thankful to get a break but it meant a lot of time on the phone and on email, tracking the situation. Obviously, I have full confidence in my staff and I think they did a good job given the circumstances.”
If he had stayed in the city, the mayor added, he could have been another person shoveling sidewalks. But, he continued, the job of tackling the snow and ice needed to be led by senior staff and completed by city workers.
“I understand peoples’ frustration,” Robertson said. “It’s been a very difficult winter. It’s been incredibly difficult in neighbourhoods where the ice formed and could not be broken up. And that’s what we have to look at – how are we going to deal with this, if and when it happens again.”
In early January, the city reported it received more than 1,800 complaints related to snow and ice through its 311 phone line and the VanConnect smart phone app. Staff, at the time, had cleared 1,300 of the complaints.
Some residents went more than a month without garbage pick-up (a city responsibility) or having their recycling collected, which is the responsibility of Multi-Material B.C. and its contractor, Smithrite.
NPA Coun. George Affleck said he fielded calls and received emails upset about some of these issues and said Robertson should have responded publicly about the city’s response.
“It’s not cool, and I think he should take it more seriously,” Affleck told the Courier last week, noting Robertson was also absent during Vancouver’s last major snowfall in 2008.
Robertson said a review of the city’s snow plan will be conducted but he has already concluded there will be a need for improvement. That could mean spending more money and buying more equipment to handle a major snowfall and resulting problems with ice.
The mayor didn’t provide a dollar number on how much this season’s snow fight has cost, although senior staff has said more than $2.5 million was spent in December.
“The city has never seen this scale of impact in a winter,” Robertson said. “This is over 30 days of dramatically difficult conditions. I believe city staff did a good job. I’m sure there’s room for improvement here and I appreciate people’s patience and people’s work to deal with their own neighbourhoods and streets and sidewalks.”
While Robertson was on vacation, Mainstreet Research conducted a poll Jan. 3 and 4 of 614 Vancouverites and asked whether they thought the mayor was generally doing a good job. The answers did not require respondents to give reasons for their answers.
Robertson’s overall approval rating was recorded at 50 per cent, which is in line with the ratings he’s had going into elections that he’s won three consecutive times. The new poll, however, ranked him 10th out of 10 big city mayors.
“I don’t pay a lot of attention to those kinds of polls,” he said. “Ultimately, the next election [in 2018] would be the test of support in the city. I’ve had a bold agenda. So there’s definitely a mix of opinions, but that’s healthy in a democracy.”
@Howellings
