Councillor's pothole proposal hits a major rut

A motion to boost the city's pothole repair budget by $3 million sparked some lively debate at city council Tuesday.

But the plan from Ward 5 Coun. Bob Kirwan was easily defeated, with some councillors wondering how the city could suddenly find another $3 million when an entire task force is already working to find $6 million needed to pay for this year's property tax freeze.

Kirwan had argued the money could be drawn from uncommitted capital reserve funds, which he said totalled $84 million.
“So $3 million isn't a big deal,” he said.

He said the pothole patrol-style repairs don't last, and crews end up going back several times. That means most of the $3 million pothole repair budget ends up being wasted on short-term fills that have to be repaired over and over again.

“It's pothole repair on pothole repair on pothole repair, and we're not getting anywhere,” he said.

He called for boosting the $700,000 the city spends on wider pothole repairs by $3 million. That money is used on more complete repairs, where most of the lane around the pothole is paved over. Those types of repairs, while more expensive, could be focused on busy arterial roads with pothole problems, such as MR80 in his ward.

“People are spending all kinds of money repairing their cars because they're driving over potholes,” he said. “The most common complaint that I've received is dealing with roads … We would be able to do an awful lot of repairs with $3.7 million.”

He also questioned why the city spends $7 million paving subdivision streets each year, when more people would benefit from a focus on fixing holes in major arteries in the city. It's easier to avoid problems on sidestreets, he said, than on busier roads.

“Forget the sidestreets,” he said. “Our cars are getting damaged by these potholes.

“We definitely can afford it … and we'll be saving millions of dollars in car repairs for our residents.”

But city CFO Lorella Hayes said there was only about $160,000 in uncommitted capital money in the roads budget. And Infrastructure GM Tony Cecutti said the problem with the roads overall is that we are hundreds of millions dollars behind in capital spending to maintain and repair the roads. It will take years of increased spending to make progress.

“If council wants offer me money, I'll take it and dedicate to our roads program,” Cecutti said. “But it would be foolish to suggest $3 million is going to solve our pothole problems.”

Ward 10 Coun. Fern Cormier said every councillor would love to have more money for their wards to fix the roads, but even if the money was available, it would be quickly consumed by the long list of repairs needed in each part of the city.

Kirwan was asking them to create a larger hole in the budget without specifying where the money would be spent or how projects would be prioritized, Cormier said.

“We all get the phone calls about the potholes,” he said. “But $3 million is literally a drop in the bucket.”

City staff and council spent hours and hours on the city budget, Cormier said, to find a way to freeze taxes. To simply decide to spend another $3 million without knowing where it would come from or how it would be spent is bad policy.

“We agonized through that (budget) process,” he said. “We have wrestled this demon for this year.”

Ward 8 Coun. Al Sizer agreed. Passing the motion would just create a larger budget hole that will have to be made up in 2016, he said.

“We can't go to a zero increase in January, then come back and say we need more money,” Sizer said. “We shouldn't be setting a budget, then coming back and saying we need $3 million more.”

Kirwan argued that the city has the money in corporate-wide capital reserve funds, and that council should do whatever they can as soon as possible to address the “emergency” of cars being damaged by potholes.

“It's not a drop in the bucket,” he said.

But Mayor Brian Bigger said that to start tendering contracts at this late stage in the season would likely lead to higher bid prices, because most of the contractors have already planned their construction schedule for the summer.

And he said it's not good policy to set a budget, and then suddenly decide to increase spending without a compelling argument to do so and a detailed plan on how the money would be spent.

“We are mid year, and we have established our budget for this year,” he said.

However, councillors did agree to review the $7 million budget for repairs sidestreets and subdivisions to see whether more should be allocated for the wider pothole repairs Kirwan referred to on arterial roads.