How Not to Keep the Books Straight

This year we awarded a contract for $991,000 give or take a dollar for a new road on Knowles Crescent. There are 51 homes on the street. That's about twenty thousand dollars added value per house. We've been carrying out the renewal of infrastructure for a number of years now and paying for it out of general revenue.

Cost has balanced out across the community. Before we started this program, we were reconstructing and replacing underground services in the old part of town and everybody shared in the cost for that program. So... it has been fair and we have grown our assets.

Neighbourhoods built in the late fifties and sixties had semi-rural roads. Open ditches provided drainage and culverts under driveways. Road surfaces weren't much more than a sheet of asphalt thrown down like a table-cloth. Driveways were loose gravel.Only front yards were sodded.

Neighbourhoods have matured and the new roads really do add to real estate values. Many of us look forward to our turn, having had the chance to see how fantastic the improvement.
It seemed that's how it was going to be on Knowles Crescent until the curbs were installed.

There was still a layer of gravel and asphalt to be added but it looked like three or four driveways were so high and the road bed so low, that never the twain might meet.

Then the proverbial element hit the fan. Nothing said could assure a few residents the matter was well in hand. E-mails started flying, talk of legal action, a meeting with the Mayor, a court reporter present and a transcript prepared.

Out of that came the hiring of a consultant to consult with residents and explain the process. It cost $6,500.

To no avail. The consultant did not have the authority to give what these few decided they had to have. More talk of legal action.

The contractor, with two weeks left to complete the job, was ordered to stop.

Councillor MacEachern held a meeting with the disgruntled residents. Subsequently a delegation appeared at council with a list of complaints and demands.

On the spot, a much scribbled upon document from Councillor MacEachern was placed on the overhead and council, without ever having a document in hand, indicating what they were approving, made yet another $65,000 available to satisfy the demands of a few ...however reasonable they may or may not be.

In addition, the delegate, Ms. Bartolomeo asked for a “go-to person” to be named and that it not be the Town's Director of Public Works. She asked for Councillor MacEachern.

It was a bonanza night for demands from the public purse. Another resident staked her claim, in the name of her neighbours, to plan the landscape of Vandorf Sideroad. $6,000, not in the 2007 budget will be spent immediately on bushes and vines. There is a further invoice for $76,000 for the upcoming budget to fullfill that lady's wish list.

Last year, the town spent in excess of $2 million realigning a creek and constructing a road with a sufficient base to carry the weight of heavy industrial traffic. Vandorf is the designated route for truck traffic. It has been for thirty-six years. Residential streets in town are not designed for the purpose. Why would they be?

Now, I understand residents living south of Vandorf Sideroad have avowed their intent – the truck traffic will be removed. As we have had an election since they first raised the issue, we have no way of knowing as of this moment who may have promised what to the residents.

No doubt all will be revealed in the fullness of time. Stay tuned.