This winter hasn’t exactly been kind to northern municipalities like Sault Ste. Marie whose residents have been putting in overtime to get out of their snowy driveways in the mornings.

Those mornings can be especially challenging when locals must dig out large and heavy chunks of ice after city workers clear and scrape the roadways overnight.

But the City of Sault Ste. Marie is looking into how it can mitigate the issue.

On Monday night, city council agreed to review how much it would cost to hire private contractors to remove bigger piles of ice and packed snow where residential driveways meet the road — also known as windrows.

Coun. Luke Dufour tabled the motion saying he’s received a number of complaints from exhausted shovellers this season. 

“It can be a real challenge in high snow years for folks when this occurs,” he said. “Most people don’t have the type of snow equipment or the physical ability to clear that amount, especially the ice chunks.”

In the past, Dufour said the city would try to clear windrows using front-end loaders but had little success.

“[The] equipment isn’t very well-suited to residential driveways, and can often cause more damage than it solves,” he said. “Now, there are more companies using residential tractor blower models with a rear-mounted blower that works really well.”

Dufour explained there’s already an outstanding motion with the city to determine how much it could cost for public works to clear windrows with suitable equipment.

The motion that council approved this week will add on to that report, he explained.

“It’s not really practical to increase the size of the city’s fleet and workforce to provide this service,” he said. “It could save some money and make it more likely to be funded if we looked at getting [estimates] from private contractors who provide this service to a large number of customers.”

This summer city staff are expected to make available a report which will include the cost to hire private contractors.

If it were approved in time for next winter, the agreement would only apply after snow removal operations were completed.

“Homeowners would continue to be responsible for their portion of their driveway after normal plowing events,” Dufour said.