Resident starts petition over state of R.M. of Kinistino roads

He has lived in the area for about eight years, and said he had a big reality check when it came to the road conditions four years ago.

Glawischnig was feeling chest pains, which later turned out to be a heart attack.

“My wife and I were wondering,’ should we call EMS?’ Given the conditions of our roads, we said absolutely no way would an emergency vehicle be able to get to us,” Glawischnig said.

His wife ended up driving him to a hospital and his health has improved since then. But “after a couple of weeks my wife and I began talking about our elderly and aged population. If they need EMS services, would they have been so lucky?”

He said they decided to attend an R.M. meeting, but encountered negative comments about the residents on the nearby James Smith Cree Nation. Glawischnig hasn’t been back since.

In the years since, “I watched things go from bad to worse” with the roads in the R.M. He said he’s spoken with about 50 people in the area, mostly homesteaders who don’t farm, who feel similarly.

“We’ve communicated directly with our R.M. administrator. Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of places there, we keep getting asked to go to council,” Glawischnig said.

He said he doesn’t feel comfortable doing that due to what he calls racist comments that came out in the meeting he did go to.

Glawischnig spoke with the offices of his MLA for Batoche, Delbert Kirsch, and the Municipal Advisory Board to see if that would help move the R.M. on improving the roads.

They received advice to document these road issues from Kirsch’s office. On June 22, Glawischnig and others did just that. They recorded with a dash cam and other cameras while driving on the area’s super grid roads and bus routes that children in the area take. There are over four hours of footage.

“The supergrid roads are funded, the maintenance is funded by the provincial government. So they’re kind of in the same boat as we are. We feel our money is being wasted and we actually feel our government’s money is being wasted as well. The reason we feel that is because every repair we do, we have to do it over and over again. So our contractors, our people get paid over and over again to do the same job. As such, we can’t get ahead of the work,” Glawischnig said.

Shmyr disagrees. He said road issues are fielded by their foreman, who he would stack up to anyone doing the same work elsewhere. Shmyr added that he is in daily communication with the foreman.

In recent weeks, the road to Glawischnig’s house went from traffic of about four or five people a day to over 60. This is because James Smith Cree Nation has washed out roads, and many only have this road to use as a detour.

He takes no issue with that, saying it’s necessary for people to get to work and appointments but adds it has taken a major toll on the road.

Shmyr said work is being done on that road and the fixes seem to be holding.

He concedes that the R.M. of Kinistino has problems on all six corners and even the Water Security Agency has a hard time with the level of saturation in the area. He said a trackhoe and grader are used in the area and that most ratepayers acknowledge weather is behind much of the road issues.

With that said, Shmyr does believe they’re slowly catching up, and that some people want repairs done immediately, but that isn’t possible.

He added that he doesn’t think a majority of ratepayers are of the same opinion as Glawischnig.

Glawischnig disagrees.

He is involved with a petition started last year asking for more accountability from the local government.

It calls for a review of the operations of the R.M. to evaluate whether its operations are run economically, efficiently and effectively. It also asks for the identification of issues surrounding the policy, organization, operation and administration of the R.M. and find solutions for those issues.

“We’re asking to have some accountability that we have never been able to have before. We have never been able to question our R.M. When I do question them on standard questions they get very aggravated, very agitated, and very evasive,” Glawischnig said.

The threshold to ask for a management audit is one-third of signatures from the overall voting population, which he considers “a very achievable task.”

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk

by Chelsea Laskowski

Resident starts petition over state of R.M. of Kinistino roads

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