If your road didn’t make the cut for 2018, don’t despair. If the Town manages to tender under budget there may be some money left over for additional capital projects, according to Director of Operations and Protective Services Steve Hernen.
The roads slated mostly for repair in 2018 were unveiled by staff at Huntsville Council’s January 22 meeting. The municipality is anticipating it will spend $3,478,250 on roads this year. Approximately half of the funds will come from taxation and money carried forward from last year, while the other half will come from reserves, gas tax rebates and development charges.
The list includes projects scheduled or continued from 2017, such as more work on the redesign of Etwell Road in order to tender for the road’s reconstruction next year, sidewalk replacement along Chaffey Street, currently in the works, as well as the creation of a new road leading to Fairvern’s new location at a cost of roughly $250,000. Work on the road to the new Fairvern is expected to begin this spring.
About nine roads are also scheduled for gravel resurfacing, including Candytown Lane, Longs Lake Road, Peacock Bay Road and Stephenson Road 7 East, among others.
Several other roads will be part of a brushing, ditching and culvert replacement program in order to get them ready for high float. Those roads include Fowlers Road, Allensville Road and Maple Heights Drive. Others, like Forest Glen Drive, Gryffin Lodge and Domtar roads, are scheduled for base stabilization and double surface treatment. There will also be a series of sidewalk replacements and work on bridges such as South Lancelot Bridge and the Centre Street Bridge.
You can find the full list of the capital projects scheduled for this year here (pdf). Some of the items on the list of nine roads on the second page may be addressed this year, if there is money left over. Which ones are chosen will depend on the funds available once the scheduled roads are addressed.
Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison questioned whether the scheduled road works need to be listed.
“We’re actually looking at that process for next year and whether we should be not listing the capital projects and just having one lump sum… so that we can limit for procurement purposes what information is available,” said Treasurer/Manager of Finance Julia McKenzie.
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Doppler readers,
The capital budget is set at approximately $3.5 million – it would be amazing to be able to spend $13.5 million, but that is just not feasible. The $600,000 amount in the budget for urban streets is an amount set for repaving areas where there are no issues with underground storm drains. We are conducting a thorough investigation of the storm water system over the next few years, so we have an excellent understanding of where the problems are. Once the report is complete for this year, staff will identify which urban street will be repaved and which ones need to be dug up and reconstructed.
There is no question that the roads you mention are years overdue for repair. In fact, most of our road network is years overdue for repair. For this reason, we have increased the road repair budget from $1.6 million in 2014 to $3.5 million this year. To repair all roads and bridges in our network to meet the standards identified in our 2015 Road & Bridge Needs Study would require an expenditure of approximately $7 million per year for the next 10 years. To that end, Council has increased roads capital spending by more than 50% over the last three years and staff have presented Council with innovative solutions for the challenges we face including:
• the replacement of old single lane bridges with box culverts which are two lanes wide, cheaper to install and cheaper to maintain,
• expanding the ditching, brushing and culvert replacement program to get ahead of the washouts from frequent storm damage,
• adding more gravel to the rural road bases prior to resurfacing a poorly constructed road,
• improving the equipment used for winter maintenance – most of which I over 20 years old…
There is no question that we have a lot more work to do and that it will not be completed over night, but Council has made it’s commitment to fixing roads clear and they have consistently voted in favour of spending more while looking for ways to spend more wisely too.
As always, I am happy to discuss any of this or other topics with anyone who is interested. I can be reached through Town Hall and via email at: [email protected]
Scott Aitchison
Yes, Yonge St South is a disgusting dangerous mess requiring sidewalks up the hill for the school children and walkers! About time folks!!
$13.5 million dollar road budget. Only 1 significant project (chaffey & Menominee) is listed in the old urban area of Huntsville. It’s not clear what the $600,000 urban improvement budget line is for (marked TBD), Question: – Why aren’t important badly deteriorated roads like Yonge St. South, West St. South, etc. not being improved? Years overdue!
Would really like some of the manhole covers in the down Town core repaired this year. Every winter they seem to fall apart with great big ugly front end smashing holes appearing. Thank you.