City council says yes to speed bumps, no to paving

“This is a residential area that has school buses, and that’s why I brought it forward … we just cannot afford to have traffic policemen out there all the time.”

Potentially, three speed bumps would be installed on the Riverside Drive – one at each entrance and one in the middle.

Dionne said this will slow traffic down on the street, if not divert it completely.

“We have the old Shellbrook highway and people are coming off of that and they’re not slowing down, then they’re coming into the city and we have school busses unloading there,” Dionne explained. “We’ve had radar out there, we’ve had the warning signs out there, and nothing seems to work on a permanent basis.

“We think that if we install those speed bumps and lower the speed limit over those speed bumps, it would slow the traffic down or … it will actually move the traffic somewhere else.”

The speed bumps will be unlike those used in the past, said Dionne, and will be similar to those used in the Wal-Mart parking lots which are wider, are able to be graded over, and will cause less noise.

Dionne hopes to have speed bumps installed on Riverside Drive by the end of the year.

Residents will not pay for paving

Although it was petitioned for, the 1300 block of 14th St. W. will not be paved.

In spring of this year, residents on the block signed a petition that would get their road paved. However, at the time of signing the petition, the residents did not know the accompanying cost that would follow.

The residents received that information earlier this month and began a second petition that would stop the paving of the street.

“Some of my neighbours didn’t understand that there would be a cost to them at all and signed the petition agreeing to the pavement,” Karen Carle explained to council on Monday night. “It is my understanding that the residents who signed the original petition were not shown any examples of rates of calculations, and therefore they didn’t know what the impact would be.”

With the proposed improvements, the taxes of the residents would likely double what they are currently paying.

After voting to defeat the original petition, the councilors had a discussion on how to improve the process of local improvements around the city.

“It’s partially our fault,” Mayor Greg Dionne said. “When you petition for paving, you walk up to the door and say, ‘Are you in favour of paving the road?’ They sign it. Once they sign it, they get a notice from us that it’s going to cost (them) … they’re not going to do it.

Counc. Ted Zurakowski urged administration to find a way to get streets paved in an affordable price and to look at the process of the petitions.

“What were the pitfalls? Why did these stumbling blocks occur? Why did it fail?” Zurakowski asked. “As we moved forward, we have to learn from this experience. Somehow the communication got lost – it wasn’t explained.”

According to Dionne, residents will receive a full package with a breakdown of costs before signing the petition.

“It’s woken us up,” Dionne said. “This is a process that doesn’t work and we’re going to look at all options because at the end of the day, this is 2015 and we still have unpaved streets in our city and to me that’s not acceptable.”

knguyen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @khangvnguyen

by Khang Nguyen

City council says yes to speed bumps, no to paving

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