Duane Hicks
Uneven joints in local sidewalks are being made easier for pedestrians to spot now that the town’s engineering department is marking surface discontinuities with fluorescent orange paint.
Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown said the town is doing this to meet minimum maintenance standards for municipal highways, as per Section 16.1 of the Municipal Act, which states all surface discontinuities exceeding two centimetres must be marked with fluorescent orange paint.
“We’re inspecting them and alerting [users] of the issue,” said Brown, noting a discontinuity is where there is a crack or joint in the sidewalk where “one side is up, one side is down,” with the height difference between the two sides exceeding two cm.
The town is doing this now after a new section was added last year to the highway standards portion of the Municipal Act.
The new section states that if a surface discontinuity exceeds two cm (or about .75 inches), the town must alert users’ attention to the discontinuity within 14 days of becoming aware of it.
The new section also states the town must make such inspections once per year.
“One of the things is we’ll eventually fix them, but there’s not too many people that have the equipment,” said Brown.
“Down south, there’s people but their equipment is tied up so we can’t get them here,” he added.
“But eventually we’ll have to start fixing the sidewalks to that standard.”
Brown admitted there’s been “a lot of sidewalks that have been in disrepair for several years now.”
“Basically, it takes money,” he stressed. “We’ve been addressing sidewalks when we go through and fix sewer and water.
“Other than that, we haven’t gone out and done any sidewalk jobs because we just couldn’t afford it.
“There’s no funding, there’s no grants for any of this stuff,” Brown said. “So, basically, every taxpayer is paying for the sidewalk network.
“Next year, we’ll probably be in a better position to address some sidewalks, but there’s a part of me that says you fix what’s underneath the ground,” he added.
“We’ve got water services that [were] put in in 1910, and you’ve got a sidewalk that’s crumbled—maybe fix the water services before you do that.
“That’s kind of how you work your way up,” Brown reasoned.
