Saskatoon’s Mayor says they are not planning a full snow removal for the City of Saskatoon. He says when it’s this much snow, the work of blowing it into trucks and then having all those trucks take it to the snow dump will be in the $14 million dollar range and he notes full snow removal is what hits the budget really hard.

Mayor Clark says it doesn’t make sense when Saskatoon will see plus temperatures coming this weekend.

“What it will mean though is it will require patience for residents because we’re gonna have a lot of parking areas blocked by snow and some of the streets that are narrow are going to narrower as we wait for Mother Nature to do her work and melt the snow.”

Monday the Director of Roadways Goran Saric said it was too early to try and tabulate the cost of this snowstorm because the snow removal phase, which is the most expensive phase of the emergency response plan, was still to be decided on. Last Friday the City announced a 9.9 per cent surplus in the civic operating budget with $5.7 million of the surplus going into the Snow and Ice Management Contingency Reserve.

Mayor Clark also urges residents who have a vehicle, that they can park off the street, to do so because it will make it easier for crews moving into residential areas to make as much progress as possible.

Snow ploughs are expected to move into Saskatoon residential neighbourhoods starting on Wednesday night which is 24 hours ahead of schedule. Last weekend’s snow storm was the fifth snow event of the season for Saskatoon.