City of Powell River councillors have approved a $2 million expenditure for upgrading city roads.
At the September 2 city council meeting, councillors unanimously passed a recommendation that the 2021 pavement management program budget be increased by $1.4 million, funded by $800,000 from the COVID-19 safe restart reserve and $600,000 from the community works fund. The city had originally budgeted $600,000 for paving in 2021. The second part of the city’s recommendation that councillors passed was that the 2022 pavement management program budget be reduced to zero dollars.
Councillor Jim Palm, in introducing the motion, said he wanted to give mayor Dave Formosa credit for bringing the proposal forward to a previous committee of the whole meeting.
“He was thinking long and hard, putting some of our COVID-19 funds together with the annual contributions of $600,000 to new pavement in our community,” said Palm. “We’re trying to combine some of those funds, along with two years of pavement funding, for a total of $2 million.
“With economy of scale, reaching out to firms for quotes, hopefully we’ll be able to pave more roads. In the staff report, there are 10 roads mentioned and I’m happy to report that adds up to quite a few metres of pavement.”
Palm said he has visited a number of the streets in question for paving over the course of being called out to inspect them by residents.
“Let’s hope we can get a few more metres if the pricing comes in correctly,” said Palm.
According to a staff report, the roads to be resurfaced include Saskatchewan Avenue, where there are also water mains to be replaced, Skeena Street in Wildwood, which is on a bus route, and Richmond Street, which also includes a storm main to be upgraded.
The following seven roads are all on bus routes: Hawthorn Street, Quadra Avenue, Oliver Street, Church Street, Sycamore Street, Allen Avenue and Tatlow Street.
