
For this Mayor's snapshot I want to address a big discussion topic in town being the number of potholes on our streets. This past winter was especially hard on streets with lots of freezing and thawing which is unfriendly to pavement. In fact, the past several winters has been especially hard on pavement with freeze thaw cycles. This is not something that happened over night, this has been years in the making. We have been understaffed in public works this year, which is a reason for not getting on the potholes as quick as we would have liked. We have a new Operator (Colby Wagner) that started work on June 3rd , and we are also contracting some extra help to get on top of things. While filling potholes is a short-term fix, we must look at more long time planning to fix our street problems. The best approach is to increase annual maintenance and the town’s recent chip seal is a good example. If you have driven down Ulster Street, you can see what a difference the chip seal has made.
Another option to consider is “mill and fill”. Aka take a chance on not replacing the underground utilities by grinding (milling) off a few inches, apply geotextile fabric and apply a fresh layer of pavement over top. This is a risk if the infrastructure underneath fails, then we are digging up new pavement which is not cost effective. Over the past century, most prairie communities have built streets and paved without a proper base, which substantially reduces life expectancy of pavement. Downing Drive in front of the town hall and fire hall was a perfect example of that. When that street was being prepared for repaving and they dug down to put in the base for new pavement, there were trees and debris under the pavement which did not provide a good base to pave on when the street was originally paved. The cost to rebuild and a pave a street is approximately $1 million/km plus another million each to replace the water and sewer underground. So, with replacing water and sewer at the same time is about $3 million/km. Munster Street is an example of this as we know the underground utilities need to be replaced. The video of the underground utilities on Munster Street confirms the poor condition so there is no point to repave unless we are prepared to fix the underground utilities, which is the long-term plan for this street. We are not the only community that is facing these issues with aging infrastructure, and we need more federal and provincial government funding directed towards infrastructure.
Please if you see me around town give me your feed back on the: Mayor’s Snapshot. I want to hear from you.
Regards,
- Mayor Tony Mycock