Hoping to better inform Huntsville residents of road work happening in 2018, the Town has released a brochure outlining its road infrastructure improvement program for the year.
Huntsville’s Director of Operations and Protective Services, Steve Hernen, told councillors at the May 30 General Committee meeting that every resident on a road where major work is being done was sent a copy of the brochure. Copies are also available at Town Hall and a condensed version of the information has been published on the Town’s website.
“The flyer explains what road work the municipality does and more importantly which roads we are doing this year,” said Hernen.
Hernen also provided councillors with an update on some of this year’s road projects.
“It’s interesting to note that we went out early in January (for high float pricing) and compared to the award the District did, Huntsville received better pricing,” he said. “That’s always been our concept, to go out early in the year and then we can obtain the best pricing possible and it’s actually working for us. So we have seen savings in a couple of the areas of the tender and we have also seen a couple overruns on a couple of small projects but it is balancing out. We are tracking that to see if we can add some additional work with it.”
He also noted that the tender for the Urban Renewal Program, which consists of repairing sections of roads in Huntsville’s urban areas that need surface restoration, was significantly below the budgeted amount—again because it was sent out early. “We had budgeted $600,000 to redo some urban roads, do some shaving and paving as we call it to areas that were not going to be affected by our storm sewer reports,” Hernen said. “That tender came in at $250,000. So staff went out looking for additional roads to add to the program.”
Among this year’s ‘shave and pave’ projects are work on Bickley Country Drive, Townline Road near Yonge Street, Frank Miller Drive, North Street, Rogers Road, and Centre Street. “I know there are other streets in town you could point to and say, ‘why isn’t that being done, it’s in worse shape,'” said Hernen. “It’s because of our storm water and sewer reports—we know they’ve got to do some major work underground. We’ll deal with that next year.”
A list of other road improvement projects being completed this year are on the Town of Huntsville website here or see the images from the brochure below.
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Great idea, Steve: forewarned is forearmed. FYI, back in the day we used to call “shave and pave”, “scratch and patch”; although perhaps they are not identical procedures.