Now that snow has blanketed southern Manitoba, a parking ban has been put in place for the City of Morden, to allow crews to keep streets clear over winter.

Director of operations Tim Reimer says the ban went into effect on October 1st.

"That runs every day from October 1st till April 30th [from] midnight till 8:00 am. Parking lots and driveways, you know that's all fine. We do want people to keep their vehicles off the streets between the hours of midnight and 8:00 AM. Unfortunately, we don't always plow snow in those hours. Sometimes we do plow during the day. So we do have to try and work around vehicles during the day, but for the most part we will try and plow at nighttime."

During the prohibited hours, city by-laws allow clearing crews to have offending vehicles towed or to issue the owner a fine of one-hundred fifty dollars. 
 
When encountering vehicles in violation of the ban, Reimer says they have two options.

"We have the ability to either have vehicles towed by some of the local towing companies or we can issue a fine. The final amount is $150. The reason why we have to implement this is because when we are plowing and we have to go around vehicles, we have to come back later and clean up that spot when the vehicles aren't there. That actually puts a lot more work on us than anything. The other thing is we can actually put more snow around your vehicle, making it harder for you to to get out later."

Every year the town faces questions about who is responsible to remove plowed snow from the end of driveways. The city has a specific policy to deal with this issue.

"Anytime the plowed snow is less than an average of 12 inches high, we won't clean it. So, if it's under 12 inches we won't clean it, if it's more than 12 inches we will clean it. 

"It's a very tough call," explains Reimer, "because we have to make that decision before, we go out plowing. So, we kind of make that call based on the amount of snow that's fallen, and then, as we're plowing, we look at the average amount of snow left at driveways."

What about heavy wet snow?

"The likelihood is we will help clean [it] up then because the heavy wet snow just freezes and that gets too hard."

Reimer points out that last year was an exception where they seemed to be out cleaning driveways after every snowfall.