Once the snow flies this year, the city will be putting more of an emphasis on clearing bus stops and sidewalks.

Council has approved adding an extra $120,000 per year to its snow removal budget to allow crews to do so. It will add $60,000 for this fall and the $120,000 will cover a full calendar year, starting in January.

With the extra resources, the city can now clear snow from bus stops and sidewalks on local streets within 24 hours of a snow event starting. Until now, the mandate has been to clear those 24 hours after a snowfall event ends.

“I believe our service levels have been lower than they should be,” councillor Kathy Sinclair says. “Not only for safety, but also for being serious about our climate action plan. And if we want people to be taking the bus and to be getting out of their cars and walking to work and that sort of thing, then we need to make that more possible year round.”

The extra money will come from taxation and will mean keeping two seasonal workers employed year-round, and also cover on-call costs when needed.

Councillor Mike O’Reilly and mayor Ken Christian said no to starting the spending this fall. Christian said he would rather wait until supplemental budget deliberations in February when the city decides on spending in next year’s budget for a number of safety requests all at once.

“And what I would like is the opportunity to stack them all up, and so we can make an informed decision comparing risk to risk. There are, in that list of supplemental items, a whole laundry list of safety matters, and we have to, at some time, rationalize that.”

The city’s snow removal budget will now be $2.02 million.