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November 10, 2014 - The One with the Pavement Management Presentation

Council Highlights – November 10, 2014 - Happy Monday everyone! There’s snow on the ground....and well I don’t have anything to follow that up with because I don’t have my snow blower back yet so I kind of hope further snowfall holds off so I don’t have to shovel.

While there are fewer things on the agenda, this meeting was packed with information. I’ll do my best to cover some highlights!

1.Riverview Arts Centre presentation

2.Pavement management report

3.By-laws

1.The Riverview Arts Centre is looking to invest in a new LED sign to promote their shows. The Arts Centre has offered some fantastic performances and strives to support arts and culture in our community. R.A.C is proposing that the sign be placed on the north side of Coverdale road, across from Dairy Queen. The town also offered to discuss having the sign located at the end of the bridge as you come across into Riverview. Council is supportive of R.A.C getting the sign and had contributed funds last year in their grant in the amount of $10,000. Discussions are still underway with R.A.C as to where it will be located.

2.Council received a pavement management report from Marc-Andre Bergeron. We have been anxiously awaiting the results of this report as well all know our network of roads is in need of some TLC. The report looked at different techniques of road maintenance and strategies of trying to improve the quality of our roads. We talked about the kinds of roads in Riverview (Local, Arterial, Collector and Tertiary). We know our tertiary streets are in poor condition. Our primary and secondary streets (the others) are in fair condition. We have a $13.7Mil backlog in road repair but when you add the backlog of our tertiary roads, our total backlog is $21Mil...ouch. This doesn’t include the work that would need to be done underneath the roads of curb and gutter.

So, from here we need a plan to look at our network of streets. My understanding is that historically, municipalities use a “worst first” practice when fixing streets however this has proven to be ineffective. If we only fix the worst streets first, then our roads that are of good quality deteriorate. Without preventative maintenance it will mean a larger financial commitment from the town. It seems prudent to have a plan to address the backlog of tertiary streets but also have a maintenance plan for our primary and secondary roads to ensure their quality doesn’t decrease. It’s about $5 per square meter for preventative maintenance, and jumps to $20 for mill and overlay. After that it can be up to 4X that amount. If we can ensure we have a preventative maintenance plan, we can ensure that our streets last longer and it will cost less. This pavement management plan helps us prioritize which streets we can focus on as well.

If we continue doing what we are doing ($795K/year) (score of 64), our score on this rating system will drop 10 points, thus quality of our roads decreases. If we aim to maintain the quality we have now it will be $1.26Mil. If we reach a score of 71, it will cost $1.69Mil and finally, if we aim to have no backlog it will be $2.48Mil. These stats graphed taking us up to 2023.

It was an incredibly informative presentation (and a little bit overwhelming). From here our public works department will be using this information to make a plan towards fixing our streets. It was recommended that we aim for the “reach a score of 71 option”.

3.The first by-law was one to repeal a by-law relating to culverts and weight restrictions on vehicles in the town of Riverview. Council heard first and second readings.

The second item was relating to traffic and the use of streets which introduced an amended version of the by-law relating to culverts and weight restrictions on vehicles in the town of Riverview and also, changing the parking restriction on Florence st from both sides to south side only.

We are about to head into our budget session with deliberations starting on Thursday, November 20 and resuming on Saturday, November 22.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, don’t hesitate to send me a message. There was a lot of information in here and a lot more that I couldn’t fit in. Staff at public works would be happy to address any concerns as well. As always, you can check out previous posts on my website www.andrewjleblanc.com.

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