Duane Hicks
With the town poised to do sewer and water work on the 200 block of Third Street East later this year, residents there will be happy to know their north sidewalk will stay.
At Monday night’s meeting, council approved a recommendation from the Operations and Facilities executive committee stating that as a result of the condition of existing sidewalks, both the north and south sidewalks will remain.
As well, only sections of the sidewalk removed for the installation of water and sewer sanitary service lines be replaced under this project.
In a report from Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown, he noted the town is trying to move towards at least one sidewalk on all local streets.
“In this case, there are two relatively new sidewalks, both recently replaced under local improvements and have several years of useful life left,” he noted.
He added elsewhere in the report that the north sidewalk was replaced in 1995 under local improvements, is in good-excellent condition, and should last for another 25 years.
But Brown mentioned in his report that keeping the sidewalk will mean more cost to the aforementioned reconstruction project this year.
If the north sidewalk were removed, the cost to remove it, and place topsoil and sod, was estimated at $9,700.
Whereas the cost to replace and reinstall concrete sidewalk from the 17 water and sewer service line excavation sites is estimated at $24,805.
At its Feb. 22 meeting, council received a petition bearing signatures from nearly 40 residents stating they did not want their sidewalk removed.
Reasons cited as to why they wanted to keep the sidewalk were as follows:
•the safety of foot traffic on the street;
•the convenience of those exiting the underpass as they turn right onto the sidewalk;
•the sake of property values, which will decrease if the sidewalk is removed;
•the protection of their yards (people will just walk on the boulevard the town proposes to substitute for the sidewalk);
•the age of the sidewalk does not warrant removal; and
•the sidewalks on this particular street receive a lot of use.
