Nearly full crew prepares for Columbia snow with new trucks
Haley Swaino
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The City of Columbia is invited community members to learn about its snow removal process.
Part of the city’s new series of interactive sessions called Community Classroom, Tuesday afternoon’s session featured a presentation from city staff on how they approach snow removal.
Columbia Public Works engineering and operations manager Richard Stone, who is in charge of snow response on city streets, gave a presentation.
He said the department is more prepared for winter this year than in recent years.
“2022, as we were approaching winter, we had 17 vacancies and we were very concerned about that,” Stone said.
But after a hiring push and pay raises, a few years later, Stone said Columbia snow crews are nearly fully staffed with 45 workers and only four vacancies.
“There was a period of time this year where we were down one vacancy,” Stone said.
Crews will be using some new trucks this season, after the city decided to replace some of its aging snow removal equipment.
“We’ve got about 30 vehicles that we use for regular maintenance,” Stone said. “And then this year, November and January, we’re looking forward to to five new trucks coming in.”
When winter storms hit, Public Works’ primary focus is on maintaining heavily used and emergency routes first. Once those roads are cleared, the department will shift its focus to residential streets.
Like Jefferson City, Columbia works to clear roads to a “drivable” or “passable” level. This means that as long as a road is at least one car wide and can be driven on with a front-wheel drive vehicle, regardless of whether snow covers the roads, it is considered somewhat clear.
Snowplow drivers are responsible for specific sectors. Cleared sectors can be found on the city’s Street and Snow Priority Viewer.
Stone said third priority routes were added in 2017 as a way to reach deeper into neighborhoods. And right now, all routes are within about 1,000 feet of each other. He hopes to get that down to about 800.
“We do think with the south salt facility that we’re going to be able to get very close to that because we’ll have a little bit quicker response time for all of the community with that facility,” Stone said. “The entire community will benefit from that.”
Stone expects the south salt facility should be up and running by winter 2026-2027.
Tuesday’s meeting was held from noon to 1 p.m. in conference rooms 1A/1B of City Hall.
The Community Classroom series is hosted by the City’s Community Connectors program, which aims to foster dialogue and build trust between community members and the city government. Tuesday’s snow removal meeting was the third session.