Two residents interested in seeing local improvements made to infrastructure in their neighbourhood brought their concerns to city council in hopes of seeing progress made.
During the most recent executive committee meeting, John Bye and Don Mitchell spoke to council about the proposed local improvement plan (LIP) policy that city administration brought forward.
Bye, who lives on the 700 block of Coteau Street East, explained he spoke with the engineering department in 2018 about having an LIP submitted for consideration in the 2019 budget. He said he was told that all LIPs were put on hold until a new universal rates bylaw was established.
“We lost that year to this process. This new policy as outline would now see any LIP not even reaching budget discussion until at least 2021,” he said.
Bye understood that the proposed LIP project on his street is a “precarious one” due to the Southeast Industrial Park development and purchase by Carpere Canada of city-owned land within his area. He pointed out Carpere’s plan is to build a new neighbourhood that borders existing residences; this new neighbourhood would have paved streets with sidewalks, storm drains and streetlights that meet an existing gravel road that lacks gutters.
It appears the Coteau Street portion would require more extensive infrastructure than was listed in the LIP that residents submitted, Bye continued. This means those plans could be years away from fruition.
Bye asked council to explore and consider the priority of existing LIPs and the possibility of expediting projects that have been put on hold. With Coteau Street, in particular, he noted upgrades to the city-owned portions within the LIP have been reduced to 33 metres to make it budget-friendly.
Reinstating dust control measures for gravel roads in the municipality is another measure Bye wanted to see. This program was dropped in 2017 without concern or control of environmental hazards that exist for residential properties within 20 metres of such roads.
Bye noted a major concern is respiratory illness or inflammation due to airborne dust and fine particles from gravel roads. It also prevents residents near such roads from enjoying the outdoors or opening their windows; he has to clean a buildup of dust almost every month on surfaces in his home.
This policy continues to be pushed back and ignored as a priority in a way that residents expect it to be, said Mitchell. He and other residents were told this proposed policy was going to come forward in March 2019, which would still have been too late for that budget year.
“It is quite frustrating in terms of the slowness of the process, but also the communications,” he continued, adding he and Bye attended the meeting only because Coun. Chris Warren contacted them about the policy coming forward.
“Communications has been not been good for the community. Hopefully, the process will move forward. If it’s possible for this project to be considered within the current budget that would be extremely welcomed, but that’s not the way it’s set up right now,” Mitchell said.
“Hopefully we can work together on this. The residents remain interested and committed, but have largely given up (in believing) that the city is serious about responding to local improvements.”
The next executive committee meeting is Monday, Feb. 10.
