The beaten path

New committee could see volunteers restoring the Millennium Trail

After putting work out for tender twice and receiving much higher than expected bids, the County will look at a different approach to restoring the Millennium Trail—volunteers.

At Thursday’s committee of the whole meeting, it supported a motion that would cancel the tender issued for the Millennium Trail rehabilitation. The motion would also establish the Millennium Trail rehabilitation ad-hoc committee for the purpose of facilitating the capital project as approved by council. The motion would appoint current Prince Edward County Trails Committee members Barry Davidson, Patrick Maloney, Amy Bodman and Vincent de Tourdonnet to the committee.

Wellington resident Barry Davidson, founder of the Prince Edward County Trails Committee, said the trail’s first upgrade, spearheaded by the Wellington Rotary Club in 2012, was an 11-kilometre portion completed over three years.

“Residents and visitors to Wellington have had a lot of pleasure and use of trail and it hasn’t required any touch-up since then,” he said. “When tenders were issued last fall and this spring, the lowest bids were far higher than the budget numbers and much higher than the cost that I incurred doing the Rotary project, even allowing for inflation, and are not acceptable,” said Davidson.

Cooney Excavating came in with the lowest tender, at $285,000, which would allow completion of 10.6 kilometres of the trail. This cost was well above staff estimates based on the Wellington Rotary project at $14,500 per kilometre.

Davidson volunteered to continue the project as was done on the Wellington portion—from Wellington to Picton as a start, then the rest of the trail following, possibly, next year.

“I was thinking to myself ‘If only we could have a construction crew like Rotary had’ and once again I said ‘I can do that.’ My longterm goal is to connect the Millennium trail with the Trans Canada Trail, which is north of the 401,” said Davidson.”

During 2017 budget deliberations council pledged $370,000 over three years to complete the remainder of roughly 40 kilometres. The Prince Edward County Trails Committee committed to raising $80,000 toward the project, but support for the restoration of the trail has been strong and the group has already raised $120,000.

Vincent de Tourdonnet, vice-president with the trails committee, said the group is proud and pleased to have Davidson lead the charge as he did with Rotary, which, he said, will end up saving money and help people get from one community to another.

Barry Davidson stands in front of a section of the Millennium Trail, that he, along with the Rotary Club of Wellington and local volunteers, refurbished.

“Last spring during trash bash we had 40- 50 people come out. We’re a group of people who can make this happen and we’re proud and pleased to have support to make this happen for the community.”

The staff report says the Millennium Trail rehabilitation ad hoc committee could coordinate the rehabilitation work through the use of volunteer resources, County ad hoc pricing for qualified contractors, and through material and labour donations. As a formal committee of council, the ad hoc committee and its volunteers would be covered by the County’s general liability insurance. Proper health and safety and construction supervision training would be provided to volunteers and all County policies for procurement and volunteerism would be adhered to.

“There is a bit of a leap of faith we are taking. These individuals have already demonstrated they are able to put an equal amount of kilometres together at a substantially reduced cost compared to what our tender is telling us. Even if they run higher than what they have in the past, they have a long way to go before they reach $28,000 and change per kilometre. So I think it is fair to give them a chance to try and deliver at a lower unit cost. Event if it is higher than they did the last time,” said Engineering, Development, and Works commissioner Robert McAuley.

McAuley also reminded council that the new group would be somewhat different than a traditional ad hoc committee.

“The ad hoc committee manner that is available to council provides certain protections and certain tools, that would assist us here, being liability protection, workers compensation protection, the ability to use volunteers in an organized manner which is something we’ve been struggling with. However we did not want the group constrained with bureaucracy and red tape. The intent of this group is not a conventional ad hoc committee,” said McAuley.

“If it is intended by council that this takes on some kind of a recommendation role, or some kind of an administrative or committement role it will fail. The intent of this committee is to get it done.”

The ad hoc committee would not be obligated to report and make recommendations like a typical committee. They will, however, be asked to document any spending.

“If it succeeds it may be the new mechanism by which we are able to engage volunteers and get work done much more cost-effectively,” said McAuley. “If we can get more mileage through the efforts of these individuals, I think it is worth the risk.”

Councillor Kevin Gale supported moving ahead with the rehabilitation. He feels it’s the municipality’s obligation to upgrade and maintain the trail.

“This is long overdue, this is something we should have done years ago with projects to eliminate bureaucracy and red tape, not worry about risk and liability, and get some things maintained in the community,” he said.

Not everyone around the horseshoe was on board. Councillor Jamie Forrester was concerned about the long-term costs.

“My big concern is this is $370,000 of public money. There are parts of the trail that I think can be upgraded to the standard we are looking at…through Picton…through Bloomfield, but there’s a lot of areas of that trail that are basically out in the middle of nowhere,” said Forrester. “The cost to maintain this long-term is going to be insurmountable. The bigger problem I have with this is as a councillor of Athol, I can’t even get the sides of my road brushed out, and here we are putting $370,000 on a trail that is used by a limited number of people,” he added.

Councillor Janice Maynard also questioned the process.

“My issue is for that $294,000 and change, we don’t have any specifications. We dont know how many kilometres they are going to get completed. We wouldn’t award a tender under those circumstances, so if they have carte blanche approval to spend that money, we have no idea what we can expect to get in return for that.”

Maynard was also concerned about the state of the culverts and bridges along the trail. “I think we really should be getting a grasp of what the entire cost of this ambitious project would be before we start down this trail. And only for that reason can I not support this.”

The Millennium Trail was acquired by the County from the Canadian National Railway in 1997. It is 53 kilometres in length and runs from Carrying Place at County Road 64, to Picton, at County Road 49 and passes through Consecon, Wellington and Bloomfield.

The motion will come before council for approval at the August 28 council meeting.