É«É«À²

At a press conference Tuesday outside a downtown seniors home, Chow said she was frustrated by how long it was taking crews to clear the snow after storms dumped more than 50 centimetres on É«É«À² over a week ago.

“I was asking people for patience (last week with staff) — but I’m done,” Chow said.

The city’s been under .Ìý

Many streets, sidewalks, transit routes and bike lanes remain covered in icy snow or blocked by snow banks that have now started to melt, adding the risk of flooding to residents’ concerns.

Officials have said crews were working around the clock, and since Feb. 19 had removed more than 114,000 tonnes of snow, or 1,700 truckloads per day.

But Chow, who has faced criticism from council opponents over the storm response, said the city should be moving faster. “It’s not working. Don’t tell me it’s working well,” she said.

In a letter to her executive committee, the mayor said she was tasking city manager Paul Johnson and auditor general Tara Anderson with a review of winter maintenance operations including examining this year’s response, determining whether past audit recommendations have been followed, looking into purchasing better equipment and creating a policy for when snow removal — labour-intensive work that is separate from plowing — should be triggered.

Chow said she also wanted to know why the city had said 100 per cent of sidewalks had been cleared at least once since the snow hit.

“Well, I’m sorry, it is not true,” she said, pointing to sidewalks covered in icy snow on D’Arcy Street, just west of downtown.

At a separate press conference Tuesday afternoon, city transportation manager Barbara Gray insisted crews had “plowed every sidewalk in the city” since the first storm, but said her department was double checking their records to be sure.

Gray explained that “plowing sidewalks doesn’t necessarily leave them clear” because road plows and melts can push snow and ice back onto walkways afterward.

The mayor is also requesting the city manager determine whether the companies that council awarded winter maintenance contracts to, under the John Tory administration, from 2022 until 2029 had fulfilled their obligations, and whether the municipality could void or renegotiate those deals.Ìý

The mayor said there could be a cost to getting out of the contracts but it was clear that at least some of the companies were “not doing a good job.”

Two companies dominate those 11 contracts.ÌýThe majority — nine in all — were awarded to Infrastructure Maintenance Ltd. and A & F Di Carlo Construction Inc., as well as their joint venture, now dubbed Snow T.O.Ìý

“Snow T.O. is committed to fulfilling all aspects of the current contract and to being fully transparent about the service we provide to keep É«É«À² moving safely,” Fausto Di Carlo, a director at A & F Di Carlo Construction and chief operating officer of Snow T.O., said in an email.

“We will co-operate with city staff in the review requested by Mayor Chow, as well as with any inquiries made by the auditor general,” Di Carlo’s email continued, adding they have worked with the city since 1998.

Snow T.O. was incorporated as a numbered company two months before the contracts were handed out in 2022, according to corporate documents.

The remaining two contracts were given to Maple-Crete Inc. and Emcon Services Inc for the Willowdale area as well as for the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway, respectively.Ìý

None of the other companies responded to the Star’s multiple requests for comment by email nor by phone.

Meanwhile, Dominic Crupi, vice-president of D. Crupi & Sons Ltd., said the city shouldn’t be surprised there are concerns about the contracts.Ìý

Crupi’s firm has been involved in snow removal for more than 60 years and worked for the city for over 20, but was shut out when the current round of contracts were awarded.

“Council was warned by other contractors. They were warned by equipment industry experts,” he said of the 2021 meeting where council voted to move ahead.

In December 2021, the city’s transportation services with a handful of companies on the brink of its old contracts ending.

The city’s previous winter contracts were a set of 47 given to private contractors, which expired in April 2022. Under those contracts, the city could stipulate mandatory equipment, including the number of equipment used, and set out certain snow removal procedures on different types of roads.

The current contracts scrap those features. Instead, the city divided É«É«À² into 11 zones and handed out 11 contracts to companies so that each one is responsible for a certain area. This was meant to achieve “a more efficient and co-operative method to delivering services,” according to city documents.

“The city basically said, ‘You guys are the experts. Come up with a creative way to do this snow removal effectively and save the city money,’” Crupi said.

Crupi told the Star they, , it would later become an issue to award contracts “to a small group of companies” for a city as large as É«É«À², and companies “that didn’t have existing infrastructure or equipment to at least cover off part of what their contract requirements were.”

During the pandemic, procurements were fraught with supply chain issues. , these issues affected the city getting the contractors’ equipment and GPS devices on time for the start of the 2022 winter season.

Jim Hurst, then-president of Steed and Evans Ltd., which had also worked with the city for more than 50 years, also  expressing concerns about the way the city rejected its bid, which was $20 million more than the municipality’s budget. The company offered to negotiate, but the city declined because “there is no viable option” that would “lead to an acceptable financial outcome” for the city, according to a letter from city staff to Hurst’s company at the time.

According to a 2021 letter Hurst sent to the city, his main concern was what came after: the city awarded a contract that was $102 million more than its budget to a contractor that did not bid for the work.

“In Steed and Evans 68 years of business, we have never seen a non-competitive award of a contract from the public sector” to a company who did not bid on it, said Hurst’s letter.

Vincent Sferrazza, É«É«À²’s director of transportation operations and maintenance, did not respond directly to this claim on Tuesday. “We followed all of the city’s purchasing bylaws and policies on how to appropriately, correctly and legally award a contract for each zone,” he said.

Several councillors at the time wanted to pump the brakes on the $1.5-billion worth of contracts that were ultimately approved. Those currently sitting on council include Paul Ainslie, Shelley Carroll, Paula Fletcher, Josh Matlow and Gord Perks.Ìý

Those who voted in favour of moving forward include councillors Brad Bradford, Mike Colle, Stephen Holyday, Nick Mantas, Jennifer McKelvie, Frances Nunziata, Anthony Perruzza, Michael Thompson and then-mayor John Tory.

A major storm declaration suspends .Ìý

The current winter contracts set out performance standards for companies in terms of “maximum operating time and the final outcome,” but “we do not have, in the contracts, service levels for snow removal which is what we’re doing now,” said Sferrazza.

A few years ago, transportation services also slashed penalties for leaving depots late from $200 per minute to $10 per minute.Ìý

“The city has done an absolutely terrible job in terms of giving themselves any sort of position of power,” said Crupi. “There’s no incentive … to do any kind of quality work.”

Crupi said back in 2021, the city told his company that it didn’t pass its “technical requirements,” despite having worked for the city for decades. “We don’t know what that means. We had two meetings with city officials and they wouldn’t tell us,” he said.

Sferrazza told the Star last week the city’s contracted equipment is “the most industrial-powered machines you can find on the market.” Crupi contends that’s not what they’ve seen: “No. Not even close.”

Gray, city transportation manager, said Tuesday she still has confidence in the contractors they hired: “I think the proof is always in the pudding. It’s a very, very big city to manage.”