Roads burden

Majority of County roads in need of repair

The hot topic of the County’s roads was at the forefront of last Thursday’s Committee of the Whole Meeting. Last fall, council directed staff to prepare a report on road conditions and actions to repair its 1,047 kilometre road network, of which 90 per cent are rural and just under half are paved with surface treatment.

Field condition assessments of all municipal roadways were completed between April and September last year by County staff, and the data was handed off to Greer Galloway Consulting Engineers for peer review and preparation of a new Road Needs Study. Roads were graded A to F with 39 per cent of roads receiving an A or B; 38 per cent a C or D, which means they are poor or rapidly deteriorating and need resurfacing; and 23 per cent an F, requiring full reconstruction. The data indicates that, at present, approximately half of the asphalt surfaced roads and nearly 60 per cent of the surface treated roads, or 482 kilometres in total, require some sort of preservation, rehabilitation or reconstruction work.

Ultimately, it was discovered that the County needs to spend $112 million today to start fixing its roads, and $202 million over the next 10 years. Funded through the operating budget, the current annual investment for road surface maintenance is $1.9 million and $3.1 million for rural road rehabilitation. “As these values exceed the municipality’s historic annual investment in roads by an order of magnitude, clearly, a more realistic plan will need to be envisioned,” said Director of Operations Adam Goheen in the report. It’s also important to note that this investment won’t be a final solution as roads continually degrade.

The implementation of the Roads Needs Study would see the roads that most need repair bumped to the top of the list. Councillor John Hirsch was fond of the idea of removing resident complaints and petitions from the decision- making process. “Taking the politics out of this is brilliant in my view,” said Hirsch. “We do this as scientifically as possible under these considerations.”

CAO Marcia Wallace explained that staff is asking council to review roads in a priority versus need fashion. The County is planning to release a multi-year capital budget based on asset direction. “We are looking for not only are these the right factors, but is this the right order. This is the conversation that needs to happen around asset governance where council sets the terms by which we will make priorities,” said Wallace. “If we just go with where is the need, we all know we can’t afford that. We have to make some choices.”

Councillor Janice Maynard believed it would be beneficial to finally have data driven research come budget time. “To have a roads need priorities list and eventually a multi-year roads asset capital plan will be one of the most important things that this municipality has done in the last 20 or 30 years,” she said.

Other members of council wondered were the money was going to come from. Jamie Forrester called it an unsolvable problem. “We are trying to find $20 million a year for the next 10 years and then starting all over again, because this is not a fixed project and then everything is good,” he said. “A real hard conversation has to happen. I don’t know any way that we will find $20 million a year to put aside, unless we want to raise taxes dramatically.”

Goheen acknowledged that it would not be an easy task. “We need to determine and work with the treasury to determine what would be appropriate for us to put forward in terms of the funding levels that we would think would be best to achieve something that would get us to a sustainable level. Clearly we have a mountain to climb and we need to figure out how we are going to get there and what is the most palatable with the community.”

Councillor Bill Roberts believed that as roads and infrastructure benefit future generations, debt servicing would be a logical path forward. “Roads and infrastructure are multigenerational assets that render multi-generational benefit, and debt, I agree, is the way to finance that,” he said.

Councillor Maynard wanted to be reassured that the document would remain a living document with changes when necessary. Director of Development Services Peter Moyer acknowledged that the document would be open for changes. “I think we all realize that anytime we do an assessment on anything it represents a snapshot in time. It’s the condition as of the day that it was inspected. Things change at different rates. It depends where it is in its lifecycle. If it is an aged piece of infrastructure it deteriorates quicker,” said Moyer. “The intent is to have a plan that identifies what things will look like on the horizon, but this is a living document. Things will change.”

Mayor Steve Ferguson was hopeful that the public would take the time to read this report and understand the comments so they have an appreciation for the state of the County’s roads. “We are subjected to all kinds of pressure and commentary about the need for ‘my particular road’ to be addressed immediately. Many of us don’t posses a full understanding of the underlying logic that goes into the repair or reconstruction of roadways,” said Ferguson.

Council received the report and directed staff to develop a multi-year road asset capital improvement program, complete with a financial plan, for council’s consideration as part of the 2022 capital budget deliberations.

The report can be found here.