Talk about snow
Restaurant association head wants better snowclearing, communication from city
Restaurant owners want info from city hall
The president of the provincial restaurant association says the City of St. John’s needs better communication with downtown businesses.
Michelle LeBlanc, owner of Chinched Bistro and president of the Restaurant Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, had criticized the city’s snowclearing after last Thursday’s snowstorm left much of downtown’s street parking unusable until crews began removing plowed snow Sunday night.
Coun. Jonathan Galgay, chairman of the city’s public works committee, said the city is paying more for enhanced downtown snow removal after previously splitting the cost of a limited contract with the downtown business association, but LeBlanc says it’s never been clear what services downtown businesses can expect, and there are gaps in snowclearing.
“The fact that there used to be a contract that did sidewalks — I would have had no idea. We’ve been down here 41/2 years. We’ve always cleared our sidewalks,” she said Tuesday.
But empty properties, including a courtyard and a vacated former business, on either side of Chinched are going untended, she said.
“All the businesses down here do their part to do their sidewalks, but in between our businesses, the sidewalks are not maintained.”
LeBlanc said someone from the city — perhaps a councillor — should meet with owners of newly opened businesses to help educate them on downtown bylaws.
At the same time, she says the city didn’t respond quickly enough to remove Thursday’s snow, with some meters still capped Monday evening.
“New Gower was still bagged off and not cleaned, and Queen Street was still barely passable,” she said. “To me, that’s a bit much. I understand that they had to bag New Gower, so that nobody parked there. That makes sense. But I don’t understand why they bag off an entire street of parking, and four days after the storm, it’s still a noparking zone.”