City Hall and provincial officials appear to have devised a plan to fix the crumbling service roads along Highway 4, north of North Battleford.
Dan Loewen, director of infrastructure, informed council the Ministry of Highways has come forward with an additional $70,000 to remediate the service roads, provided the City also spends $70,000.
This would cover $140,000 worth of work along the service road along Highway 4 north, which runs alongside the car dealerships as well as Oil Can Charlie’s/Betty Bubbles.
The service roads had been in poor shape for some time, with noticeable cracks. The roads had also been subject to dispute between the City and the Province.
The City has maintained the service roads fall under the Urban Connectors Program and ought to be remediated to like-new condition by the province before they become City responsibility.
At planning committee in May, administration officials vented at length about the state of the service roads in both the north end and the southeast quadrant, and outlined plans to communicate further with the province on the issue.
The City has already spent $55,000 on service road repairs in front of No Frills. With the province now coming through with $70,000, the intention is to go ahead with road repairs in the north end as well.
“It’s kind of hard to turn that money down,” said Loewen at council Monday.
Mayor Ryan Bater welcomed the funding.
“It’s great to have that partnership with the province to get that work done,” said Bater to reporters, “because they were becoming a very big problem in terms of vehicular traffic accessing businesses along those service roads.”
The City will fund its portion by using $100,000 that had been allocated towards a tandem truck purchase. Instead, that purchase is being pushed back to 2019.
The intent is to begin work starting with the east side north of the Farm Credit Canada building, and then see how far the $140,000 will go.
“It should be quite an improvement,” said Loewen.
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