ATHABASCA – Athabasca County roads need some work, but there is no need to increase the budget to take care of them just yet.
Coun. Kevin Haines brought the issue to the table at council’s June 9 meeting saying he has been hearing from a lot of negative reviews from residents about the state of the roads in the county and wondered whether an increase to the budget would help get some of the biggest issues fixed.
“I’ve got several roads that are more or less under water or washed out and we haven’t even dealt with some of the frost boils yet and some of the clay was coming through when the rains yet,” said Haines.
“I’m not sure if the gravel budget will be enough for what’s coming, so I think we need some flexibility to deal with our roads.”
The state of the county roads is no secret to councillors or administration.
“Boy, we do have some road issues,” said reeve Larry Armfelt.
“I think what we have to do is make the money available to (director of infrastructure services Norm De Wet) where he needs to use it and not really worry about the budget. If he has to go over budget, we have to stop Norm from worrying about spending some money where it’s needed.”
County manager Ryan Maier told council administration was “well aware of the issues,” and they were being fixed as quickly as possible, but he was wary about reopening the budget until the funds are actually needed.
“I think I would prefer that we just monitor things. We know that council supports what we’re doing, so we’re not worried about that, and if there comes a time later on in the year when we see we are going to need extra money in the budget, we will bring that back to council as a request at that time,” said Maier.
“We’re not in any budget troubles at this point, but we anticipate that later on we could be, but I’d rather address it as it comes.”
Council was in agreement about the state of the roads, especially after recent rains, and didn’t have any issues with coming back to administration, when needed, to increase the gravel and road maintenance budget numbers.
“I’m 100 per cent behind more gravel and repairs. We need to do what we need to do,” said Coun. Penny Stewart.
She then went on to laud the public works department and asked if there was anything council could do to streamline the process of notifying the department about issues that come up without taking too much of their time.
“Hats off to that department. It is insane and things are getting done and flagged off very fast. As fast as I can drive out somewhere, they’ve already been there and done it,” she said.
Coun. Christi Bilsky echoed those accolades.
“There’s always a lot of negativity out there and they never get the good calls, but they are doing an amazing job and it would be nice to let them know that,” she said.
Maier noted there are some really bad spots, but if you look at neighbouring municipalities, there are lists of roads they have closed.
“I know this might be a little counterintuitive to what some of the opinions are out there, but I think our roads are really good,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can. We realize people are frustrated, but I think overall they’re doing a good job.”
Chris Zwick,TownandCountryToday.com
