Street maintenance crews push on despite staff shortage

By Chris Fortune

Slightly warmer temperatures are helping to melt the snow left over from last week’s snowfall, but that doesn’t mean the job is going to get easier for street maintenance.

A fully staffed street maintenance crew has 16 members each on the day and night shifts clearing roads during a snowstorm, but last week, they were down to as little as seven crew members at a time.

There was a time when the street maintenance supervisors would panic when they were down six people.

“It just takes longer to complete a route,” Superintendent of Streets and Infrastructure Jackson Jones said. “Longer completion times mean it’s a longer time before we get into the secondary (routes), a longer time before we get into the districts.”

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic left the St. Joseph Public Works and Transportation Department with a worker shortage that it has endured nearly four years later.

“During and after and through until now, we’ve just never recovered from what I’ve seen personally,” he said.

As a result of the worker shortage, street maintenance has borrowed operators from different areas of public works, like sewer maintenance, to help with snow removal. Two inches of snow trigger street maintenance to deploy its plows.

“One of our supervisors over at sewer maintenance, he’s on light duty, but he has a CDL (commercial driver’s license),” he said. “So we put him in the cab in the passenger seat with a permit driver, and that added two drivers to our street.”

Street maintenance supervisors also help clear streets when needed. Senior Work Leader Craig Williamson said he helps by getting into a smaller truck to clear roads the larger trucks can’t fit through.

“What we have gotten done with the short amount of people that we have, you know, it’s pretty good,” he said.

Generating interest in open positions with street maintenance is one hurdle, but training applicants without a CDL is another. It can take up to six months for an employee to gain their CDL, but the city reimburses workers who acquire it.

“There’s an incentive there to try to get this (CDL) instead of having to find some way to do it on your own,” he said. “So we try to help anyone out that comes in that wants to work.”

Street maintenance works 12-hour shifts and sometimes holidays when the city faces a snowstorm. With up to an inch of snow expected on Thursday, Williamson said workers will be ready.

“We’ll be right back in that same position,” he said. “But again, while we’re here, we’re going to do the best we can and take care of everybody that we can.”