City to look at cutting back on rush-hour road work (8 City Council briefs)

Sault Ste. Marie City Council agreed tonight to look for ways to reduce the effect of road construction and line painting on morning and evening rush-hour traffic.

City staff will be asked to investigate whether future road work contracts could specify that impeding traffic be avoided as much as possible from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. "as long as the restrictions have no more than a minimal impact on the overall cost of the road works."

The idea was proposed by Ward 3 Councillor Matthew Shoemaker, who assured councillors that "I'm not asking them not to do work during these hours."

"I'm just asking them not to do either a resurfacing or a line-painting that would really impede traffic. There is other accessory-type work that can be done in these times,"  Shoemaker said. "It's not that all the work being done between these hours has to stop."

"This really only applies to arterial roads, so we're talking a handful of roads in the city right now. Two sections of Second Line are being done. That's what prompted this resolution," the councillor said.

Shoemaker said he recently saw work crews resurfacing Second Line one day between Great Northern Rd. and Old Garden Rd. at 5:15 p.m. – a time he considered unsafe and inconvenient.

Another day, he saw line painting done around 8 a.m.

"It's not only the inconvenience of the people driving the roads. It's the inconvenience to the businesses that are open, that you can't access" added Ward 1 Councillor Paul Christian.

Also at tonight's City Council meeting:

• councillors got behind an initiative by Mayor Christian Provenzano to prepare a submission to the Smart Cities Challenge – a $300 million federal infrastructure program intended to "encourage cities and their most creative minds to adopt new and innovative approaches to city-building." The competition offers two prizes of $10 million for mid-sized communities, one prize of $5 million for a small community, a $5 million prize for an Indigenous community and a $50 million grand prize.
• City Council also approved another mayoral wish – a service delivery review aimed at modernizing and upgrading the city's information technology infrastructure.
• a resolution from Ward 3 Councillor Matthew Shoemaker about the M.S. Norgoma gained council's support. City staff will be directed to examine options for removing the rusting boat from the Bondar Marina. Councillor Shoemaker withdrew additional proposals to look at whether the marina could be used in winter as an outdoor skating rink, and whether a former piece of boardwalk alongside H.D. Sports Grill could be restored.
• planned discussions about proposed changes to Clergue Park and replacing Queen St.'s ash trees were pulled from the council agenda at the last minute. Mayor Provenzano explained: "City staff is working on a larger project where they're looking at a number of downtown projects." The mayor said council will be receiving a report next month outlining the costs for all of the projects, including the Clergue Park fountain and tree removal. Debating some of the items tonight would "essentially be dealing with these things twice," Provenzano said.
• councillors approved spending $72,000 for removal of mould from the McMeeken Centre dressing rooms. The work has actually already been completed and the arena re-opened today. The unexpected expense was attributed to unusually warm weather this fall. The $72,000 "does not include the cost of replacing the sports flooring in the facility, but does include the cost of providing rubber runners to be placed on the concrete floors of the dressing rooms," Norm Fera, manager of community centres, said in a report to council.
• a tender for three 13,500 gross vehicle weight dump trucks was awarded to Commercial Truck Equipment Corp. of Woodstock. Commercial Truck's low tendered price for the three 2017/18 Ford F-450 vehicles was $208,692. City staff determined that bids from Tru-Nor Truck Centre of Sault Ste. Marie and Blue Mountain Chrysler Ltd. of Collingwood didn't meet specifications. No information was supplied to council about deficiencies of the two rejected bids.
• Council received a report about the city's latest credit rating without comment.