By Thia James

City looking at alternatives to oiling program

Mar 21, 2013 | 12:20 PM

A new report from Prince Albert’s public works director states dust control methods will eventually cost property owners almost as much as proper paved roads.

The report sparked a discussion during Monday’s executive committee meeting about gathering residents’ support for paving streets in front of their properties. Over a 10-year period, the cost to oil roads annually is nearly $1,000 less than one application of hot mix asphalt – $4,134 versus $5,353.

“Over time, if you’re doing dust control for a prolonged period of time, you essentially get to what you would have paid to have it paved in the first place. However, that occurs over a much longer period,” public works director Colin Innes said during the meeting.

“Asphalt has a much bigger front-end cost to it in order to get it into place. So the thing that we did look at was a bunch of different [dust control] products,” he said.

Currently, the city uses oil to control the dust that kicks up in the warmer months on its unpaved roads.

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Administration is looking at alternatives to the street oiling program.

Innes is leaning towards using either an organic product or a polymer product to apply to the roads’ surface. He told the committee these products are cheaper than street oil.

But Councillor Rick Orr suggested the city directly advertises the cost-effectiveness of an ‘asphalt-and-curbing’ – a paved roads – solution. For the dust control products, he said there’s no end in sight for their use. “This goes on for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.”

And it’s a sentiment that other members of the executive committee, including Coun. Ted Zurakowski , agreed with.

“I think it’s a good argument if we get the numbers out there [for dust control costs] that if you get the oiling done on the same street every year for 10 years, do you want to just look at getting it paved?”

The discussion then turned to how to deal with absentee property owners with vacant lots who shoot down efforts to have streets paved. Coun. Lee Atkinson further pointed out there are stretches along avenues where no home faces onto the road, essentially making it a city block.

“What is our initiative to do our own work?” he asked.

Mayor Greg Dionne said if the city gets residents on two streets in any ward to agree to pave their road, the city should take on the responsibility for paving the avenues.

“Lots of portions that we leave [unpaved] are the avenues.

To me there’s no frontage on the avenues. So that should be our responsibility and part of the encouragement for people to do the project is get this street to do it and this street and we’ll do the two avenues,” Dionne said.

The committee was faced with options including using alternatives to street oil and introducing an aggressive long –term paving program – or it could have extended the life of the oiling program. Council will make a decision on the future of the program in an upcoming meeting.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames