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Top stories of 2013: Prince Albert’s paving push

Dec 28, 2013 | 7:35 AM

Beneath the layer of hard-packed snow and gleaming strips of ice on roads scattered throughout Prince Albert are new layers of asphalt.

In a recent city council meeting, Mayor Greg Dionne said the paving projects completed in 2013 would be this council’s “legacy.”

Two days before Christmas, the mayor explained that further. “Well, because, lots of councils have talked about it, and this council has taken it on, head on,” Dionne said.

“And it took the brunt of [the] criticism at the start of the $189 base tax [increase] to go to the asphalt program.” He added that by the end of the summer, early fall, residents realized how successful the program really was.

The city’s big paving push was in part spurred along by a report tabled within the first weeks of the year.

The report concluded that in order for the city’s main and residential roads to maintain status quo in relation to the previous year’s pavement quality ranking, $4 million dollars would need to be spent on the paving program in 2013.

The report authored by Wes Hicks found that if less than $4 million were to be spent on paving in 2013, the Pavement Quality Index (PQI) average of the city’s roads would slowly deteriorate within the next 10 years.

At the time of the report, Prince Albert’s roads held an average of 62. The ideal range for the PQI is between 65 to 75.

“From a perspective of once it crosses below 50, it doesn’t mean, you know, necessarily that all the roads are going to all of a sudden blow up and turn into potholes, but what it does mean is that you’re on the downside of the condition and that over time, I mean, it’ll just continue to degrade unless you address it,” said public works director Colin Innes in January.

He noted that in 2005, council gave the asphalt program full funding, but in subsequent years, it hadn’t. Since 2005, the city’s PQI average for residential roads fell from 74 to 56.

Innes had noted that by 2022, if the city continues to only fund the paving program at the $2 million mark, the PQI would fall below 50. “I think that everybody would notice, ‘I think these roads are getting bad, what’s going on?’ And so, I guess, 2022 isn’t tomorrow, but it’s not that far away either.”

But months later, in the city’s proposed budget was the request for near $1 million in funding additional to the already allotted amount of more than $2 million for paving in 2013. The combined amounts would bring the total budget for the paving program to the ideal $4 million in funding.

The $189 base tax

The end of the budget committee deliberations in April saw the funding injection to the paving program as requested by the department of public works.

The budget committee unanimously approved the 2013 general fund budget, with $4 million set aside for the paving program. Within that, was a $189 base tax increase which would go towards the $4 million 2013 paving program. With the increase came a guarantee that every dollar from the base tax increase would be exclusively used for paving.

But there was also the promise of continuing to set aside $4 million towards paving more of the city’s roads each year for the next four years.

“And when you look around our city, it’s roads, roads, roads. So, you think over the next four years, we’re going to put down $16 million worth of asphalt. So, we’re going to have lots of nice roads and repairs and that’s what people wanted to see,” Dionne said on the day the budget committee unanimously approved the 2013 budget.
The budget was later approved – without unanimity – by council.

Paving begins

In June, Dionne rolled out a list of nearly 40 roads on the 2013 paving list, which were among the ones in the worst shape. Projects were slated for all four corners of the city, but were concentrated in the West Flat, downtown, River Heights and South Hill.

The projects on the list were the ones that were deemed ‘ready-to-go.’ Any roads with sewer and pipelines needed below the surface would be on a future year’s asphalt repair list. 

The road work projects, including one at 15th Street and Central Avenue, brought detours and traffic disruptions around the city. At some points over the summer, road construction crews were working on multiple projects in different parts of the city at a time.

The intersection repair at 15th Street and Central Avenue caused major disruptions and traffic jams, as a project that was supposed to take several days to complete, ended up taking weeks to wrap up at the end of the summer. The construction delays just east of the intersection made it difficult for fire trucks to exit the nearby fire hall at peak traffic periods. 

In one instance, a ladder truck couldn’t get out of the hall and onto 15th Street. Instead, the Prince Albert Fire Department had to use an alternate truck.

Repairs to potholes on city roads, however, faced setbacks. Short-staffing forced the city’s operations manager Alain Trudel to shut down one of the two paving crews to finish street sweeping.

By late fall, paving season wrapped up. And in total, the city spent $4.6 million on asphalt projects, with the additional $600,000 coming from other public works department funds.

Nearly all of the road work projects had been completed, but the ones on this year’s list that couldn’t be finished will be added to next year’s list.

“What we do is we make a list of the streets that we see as the highest priority, but we add to that list more than we can possibly do in one year in case something has to be dropped off the list,” Hicks said at the end of paving season.

The projects not completed this year will automatically become the first priority on next year’s list.

“So, any streets that we weren’t able to complete, but had been identified, will be the first streets that we’re going to attack next year.

“Now, having said that, we’re trying our best to not leave any of those streets behind.”

The department is hoping that council will consider a 1.1 per cent increase to the paving budget. The increase would be based on a forecasted rise in the consumer price index. If approved, the increase would bring next year’s paving budget to $4.44 million.

Next year, there will likely be another 30 streets paved, Dionne said on Monday. He noted that other cities are following Prince Albert’s lead on paving their roads.

“And you’ll notice that other cities – Saskatoon, Yorkton – have all adopted programs to add asphalt work in 2014. So the council at the City of PA have sort of led the program in the province about directing infrastructure … deficiencies, like paving.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames