A citizen complained that the side of the street he lives on was not being cleaned as well as the opposite side. He submitted that each time he had called the borough’s attention to this situation, over the course of the past five years, he had noted an improvement, but only for a few weeks, and then the situation rapidly reverted to the way it was before.
The intervention of the Ombudsman de Montréal allowed to establish that the problem arose from the way lunchtime was scheduled for the mechanical sweeper operator responsible for cleaning this street. According to this schedule, cleaning of the section of the street facing the citizen’s residence was to take place between 11:00 am and 12 noon, whereas the lunch break for this mechanical sweeper operator was from 12:00 noon to 12:30 pm, plus time to proceed to the place where he had lunch. As per his schedule, after his meal, the operator resumed work a little further down the street, to start his afternoon route.
The section of the street where the citizen resided was thus the last in line for cleaning before the operator’s lunch break, and whenever the morning’s work was behind schedule, due to a mechanical failure or for any other reason, the operator did not complete his morning route before breaking for lunch. Upon returning from lunch, the operator then started his « afternoon route » on a new street section, thus leaving the citizen’s portion of the street unclean.
Following the intervention of the Ombudsman de Montréal, the borough modified the schedules for cleaning this street and for the operator’s lunch break, thereby offering more flexibility when faced with unforeseen delays and ensuring greater consistency in the cleaning of this entire street.
