Road politics

Councillors Dianne O'Brien (left) and Janice Maynard on Rednersville Road with disenchanted resident and commuter Chris Livingstone.

Ameliasburgh councillors push to put Rednersville Road at the top of road reconstruction list

I’m not giving up,” said Ameliasburgh Councillor Dianne O’Brien after her most recent attempt to initiate a project to rebuild Rednersville Road (County Rd. 3) was rejected by a committee of council.

The road running along the Bay of Quinte between Rossmore and Carrying Place is in poor condition. No one disputes this fact. Sections of the road were never properly constructed but rather built up from the early shoreline track. Situated midway along the slope toward the bay the roadway suffers from rain runoff damage and heaving in the spring.

Population has increased considerably along Rednersville Road—with many using the road as a part of a daily commute to Belleville, Quinte West and even the Greater Toronto area.

The cost to rebuild the 19-kilometre road will, however, be measured in the millions of dollars. Mayor Peter Mertens explained to a town hall meeting in Ameliasburgh in March, in response to questions, that Rednersville Road was not a project the County could undertake on its own. He said the province would have to take the lead funding role and that wasn’t likely to happen this year.

Last week O’Brien tried to persuade fellow council members to develop an “approach,” or plan, to rebuild the road—to be ready when the province is ready to fund road projects.

“The province knows there is a gap,” said O’Brien, suggesting the province understands it has underfunded roads since downloading them onto municipalities nearly a decade ago. “We need to know what the approach is.”

Fellow Ameliasburgh Councillor Janice Maynard joined the fight.

“This is a highly travelled arterial road,” said Maynard. “For large-scale projects we need to do the preparation work to be ready.”

But few on council were prepared to support a specific road project—especially one as potentially expensive as Rednersville Road is likely to be. Some are clearly still smarting from a tough budget debate.

“This is the council that raped the Public Works department during budget deliberations,” said Kevin Gale, councillor from Sophiasburgh. “Everybody was happy with a one per cent increase, now they want their roads fixed.” Gale argued that council didn’t have the money and therefore needn’t burden roads staff with planning work until money was found. He said, too, it was wrong for councillors to politicize road reconstruction.

Hallowell Councillor Keith MacDonald found Gale’s sudden conversion to a hands-off doctrine with regard to road priorities a bit rich.

“You’ve got to give this guy (Gale) full marks for political know-how,” said MacDonald. “He managed to get $2.7 million spent on the road from Demorestville to the bridge. It’s a beautiful road.”

Barry Turpin, councillor for Bloomfield, also believes the County must take politics out of decision making on which roads are maintained and when.

“We need a list of priority roads projects and one or two must be shovel-ready,” said Turpin. He and several other of his colleagues believe this work should be done by Public Works staff.

“I have full confidence in the commissioner to determine his department’s priorities,” said Brian Marisett, councillor for Picton. “These decisions require science and technical knowhow.”

Terry Shortt, councillor for Sophiasburgh, said he couldn’t support one project over another. He also tried to rewrite history on the fly.

“In 2003 we took the politics out by devising a detailed roads plan,” said Shortt. “But then politics got in the way.”

In his telling of events, Shortt skiped over the bit in which the municipality squandered $11 million to fund a financial engineering scheme it had neither the expertise nor the ability to manage.

It was left to MacDonald to illustrate why O’Brien’s gambit to put Rednersville Road at the top of the list was doomed.

“This is all fine and dandy,” warned MacDonald, “but if Hallowell isn’t on this list there will be a delegation in this chamber.”

With this affirmation that roads remain a political football—all but Councillors Maynard and Nick Nowitski turned down O’Brien’s request.