City of Powell River council will consider allocating $2 million to the 2021 pavement management plan.
At the August 26 finance committee meeting, director of infrastructure services Tor Birtig outlined the proposal, which would add $1.4 million to the $600,000 budgeted for paving this year.
“In the last five years we have spent an average of $370,000 a year on our pavement management program,” said Birtig. “Obviously, it’s quite reduced from our $600,000 target.
“Nonetheless, we’ve come up with a list of roads we would like to do with the movement of funds from the COVID-19 safe restart reserve, as well as $600,000 from the community works fund.
“So that would be $800,000 from the COVID-19 reserve, which would make up an additional $1.4 million, added to our existing budget of $600,000. We’re looking at a $2 million package of pavement that we would like to do.”
Birtig said the city came up with a list of prospective paving projects. He said staff reviewed a number of roadways and selected the list based upon the underground infrastructure and condition of the roads.
“We looked at traffic impacts, such as whether they were on bus routes, we looked at pavement condition index – the ridability of our roadways, and came up with a list of 10 roads,” said Birtig.
The roads include Saskatchewan Avenue, where there are also water mains to be replaced, Skeena Street in Wildwood, which is on a bus route, and also 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.
“We would like to move funds from the other funds so we can come up with a $2 million package, and hopefully, experience some volume discounts by putting a larger package together,” said Birtig.
Councillor Rob Southcott asked if the rest of the city’s asset management program would be affected by the expenditure.
“If you take money and do something with it, you are not going to be able to do other things with it,” said Southcott. “That being said, I also really like the idea of getting a lot of work done right away because obviously the scale of economy will get us more bang for our buck.
“The second apprehension I have, using the COVID-19 money, is there anything else we were thinking of? I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet from an economic standpoint. I’m just a little bit nervous spending the whole works of that and not having that money in the bank. Spending more money makes me nervous, I guess.”
Birtig said the program will improve the condition of the city’s roadways in the asset management plan.
“We have fallen behind in the past,” said Birtig. “It definitely is going to impact it in a positive way.”
Chief administrative officer Russell Brewer said the proposal was the use of the COVID-19 reserve, and using $600,000 of community works money the city would be using next year, but this year instead.
“The other part of your question was whether there are other projects that could be funded with the restart money,” said Brewer. “I think this will leave us with roughly $400,000 of restart money available for other projects. The only potential project we see ahead of us, where we may come to you asking for additional funds from the restart money, is if there are additional resources required to help enforce the vaccine passport the province has just announced, because that will require more resources on the part of staff, at the recreation complex in particular.”
Birtig said he wanted to add that the city is not planning a pavement program in 2022 if the proposed expenditure is passed by council.
Palm appreciates proposal
Councillor Jim Palm said he greatly appreciated the work that had been done regarding the proposal. He said the $370,000 average annual program has left many streets in disrepair and he has been called by residents to a number of streets to take a look firsthand at the condition of the roads.
“I very much like the idea of seeing this new pavement laid in those areas where the residents are saying ‘please do something,’” said Palm.
Finance committee chair George Doubt said the city was using funds that had already been budgeted for road maintenance.
“According to all of the reports that I’ve read, for quite some time we’ve been underfunding road maintenance that would be required just to keep the roads in a usable condition,” said Doubt. “We haven’t been spending enough money to improve roads. We haven’t been spending enough money to keep them in usable condition. This is an effort in one year to combine two years’ budgets, add some COVID-19 money, which we’ve got, and not use any debt.
“It’s something that council is going to have to think about going forward, but I support this for now,” said Doubt.
The committee gave unanimous consent to move the matter to the September 2 council meeting for consideration of adoption.
