Just one meeting in August for Weyburn City Council held last night. Among the regular consent agenda items, including reports from the Building Department, the Fire Department, Public Works, and the Water Treatment Plant, Council also approved an application for a home business occupation, and a new OCP zoning bylaw contract was approved for Fido's Place Doggy Daycare.
Engineering Director with the City, Jennifer Wilkinson, presented Council with details about the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure (MHI) requesting 'Expression of Interests' to identify priorities in each city for urban highway connector improvements.
The City of Weyburn has identified 2 projects as a priority for the UHCP. Priority 1 is to mill down and repave 1st Avenue from Government Road to 10th Street. Priority 2 is to mill down and repave King Street from 1st Avenue to 5th Avenue north.
"Both these locations are part of our truck route and see a lot of heavy truck traffic," she noted. "These areas are showing significant surface damage and have not had any major work done in the past 10 years. The City does a pothole patching program on both roads every year. We want to repair the surface before we see damage to the sub-base and base. Both areas are a Level 3 in terms of our UHCP agreement and would receive up to 70 percent funding from the Government of Saskatchewan."
In order to move the expression of interest, the government of Saskatchewan requires a resolution stating City Council agrees to meet legislative standards to meet the terms and conditions of the UHCP program, to conduct an open tendering process, to manage the construction of the project, to fund the municipal share of the project, to fund ongoing operation maintenance costs, and to provide any mitigation measures as required by the Federal Impact Assessment Act and the Environmental Assessment Act of Saskatchewan.
It is a recommendation that Weyburn City Council provide the province of Saskatchewan with the required resolution for the UHCP expression for both priority 1 and priority 2 projects.
Councillor Dick Michel made the motion to approve submitting these priority projects, and it was seconded by Councillor Laura Morrissette, who posed a question.
"If we go ahead and submit this, does it tie us to any mandatory completion, if some sort of government funding doesn't come through? I just didn't want to see the citizens of Weyburn on the hook for $3 million we don't get any funding back from the government."
"All these projects actually have to be under $500,000 when submitting them to this program," explained Wilkinson. "So we're not looking at massive things, and these would be done through our budget process, so we would have enough time to our budget process and would know, based on their approval on their side, of what they would give us for funding, so we will be able to budget through our process how much would actually be. But both projects are under $500,000."
Councillor Michel said it's a quick solution, but not a good long-term solution. He said there should be a bypass route around the City, since the trucks on this trade route don't make stops here anyway.
"This truck traffic that we're talking about should be reverted out of the City of Weyburn, instead of encouraging that we keep having them here," said Michel. "We've met with the government before, and there is a way to do that."
"There's major traffic there each morning, and some of these vehicles do not drop anything off in Weyburn at all, and go all the way through at an increased speed. So by doing this, I struggle with saying yes to this one, because, what you're doing, we haven't solved any problem with the truck route. We just keep saying that's fine. But it's not fine. Things have to be changed."
Mayor Marcel Roy's rebuttal was that, when a bypass goes all the way around a City, the businesses do not benefit from Weyburn being on the trade route, as in Estevan.
"It cuts out the businesses completely, cuts out everything. While it is really good for congested trucks, but then also businesses suffer," he noted. "This is the best solution that we've got. Yes, we've got a lot of issues with our roads. I know people have complained that our roads have really gone down, but we are tied to the government, and these are two highways going through our City, and we have to wait for the government to give us money."
Councillor Mel Van Betuw said he agreed with both Councillor Michel and Mayor Roy, noting it's anybody's guess when or if the truck route would be adjusted.
"We do have to ask for help in repairing that road in the meantime, because it is getting worse and worse and worse, and it is at a huge cost to the city, so I don't think we can wait for the government to respond to the helping us solve the truck route. Although we do need to continue lobbying for that direction."
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