The start of winter is now less than two weeks away, and for the first time this season the city of Joplin could contract out snow removal. KRPS’s Fred Fletcher-Fierro has more.

On average Joplin received about 12 inches of snow every winter, with most of the accumulation occurring in February and March. Due to the pandemic and ongoing worker shortage, the Joplin city council is considering whether to outsource overnight snow removal by using Asbell Excavating and Trucking.

Assistant Director of Public Works and Operations Lynden Lawson said at the meeting that one of the reasons the city chose Asbell is that the company already has a snow removal contract for the Joplin Airport. Lawson details what the contract includes. “The contract that we’re bidding out is a contract for labor only. The crews will be using the city equipment. The reason that we did that is that this isn’t Minnesota.” Joplin would allow the contracted out help to use city equipment. The on-call help would work a minimum of four hours if contacted, working the overnight hours of 7 am to 7 pm. The city council did not vote on whether to move ahead with the contract. For 89 9 KRPS, I’m Fred Fletcher-Fierro