By Greg Nikkel
Most of Weyburn’s sidewalks are in good shape, but around five per cent of them need to be inspected for replacement, city council heard at their June 26 meeting.
Coun. Dick Michel and Pat Maloney walked every sidewalk in Weyburn between April 25 and June 12, spending a total of about 35 hours to make 2,491 recorded observations altogether.
Coun. Michel had made the commitment to do a thorough tour of all of Weyburn’s sidewalks, with the goal to inventory the sidewalks so the information can be sorted and used by the City’s engineering and works department to assist in their maintenance and asset management strategies.
They classed the sidewalks in one of six categories, including unsafe in need of inspection for replacement, poor condition, trip hazard, exposed aggregate, acceptable condition and good condition.
Under the unsafe category, they recorded 129 instances or five per cent of the records, with 609 instances, or 24 per cent, in poor condition, which means they were cracked and broken.
There were 823 instances of a trip hazard, or 33 per cent of records, with the recommendation to inspect for grinding. There were 337 instances of exposed aggregate or 14 per cent, and 497 were considered in acceptable condition, or 20 per cent of the records. Those in new or like-new condition were 86 instances or three per cent of the records, and there were 10 instances of miscellaneous information, such as the need for sweeping.
Coun. Michel noted they saw very few pet droppings while they were out, and admitted they were very liberal in what they classed as a trip hazard.
“Most of those identified have the potential of becoming a hazard and were documented primarily to be of record in the asset management database,” he said in his report.
They also observed that some sidewalks have been capped with asphalt, and have held up very well, indicating that asphalt may be a cost-effective option that could be explored for maintenance of sidewalks.
The pair also noted at intersections where accessibility ramps have not been constructed, there were many instances of shifting between the sidewalk and the curb which have resulted in creating trip hazards.
Maloney commented that under category 5, acceptable conditions, this assessment was based on a block as a whole. “We didn’t document the good things, just the bad,” he said.
Council awarded a contract for groundwater well monitoring to Matrix Solutions, after the city received proposals from three consulting firms. In awarding to Matrix, it was noted the company has managed and implemented groundwater monitoring programs at 19 landfills across western Canada.
The report on the project also noted that Matrix had the highest costs for reporting for monitoring the groundwater well at the landfill, at $10,728, for which the city had budgeted $7,000, and for the sewage lagoons, they proposed $6,357 for the field work and reporting, and $911 for lab fees, for a total of $7,268, less than the budgeted amont of $9,000.
Council approved a request from Lubrizol Oilfield Solutions Canada to increase the chemical storage at their existing facility at 1745 Railway Avenue to 50,000 litres.
The company received the approval from the Ministry of the Environment, and the city made their approval subject to a list of nine conditions.
In a report from the city’s Parks Board, the board agreed with a proposal to relocate the large rock from the Garden of Hope Peace Park near Highway 39 to River Park to an existing flowerbed where it will be more visible and accessible to the public.
The rock was placed in the Peace Park as a cancer memorial moment, and the park was to be maintained by the Canadian Cancer Society. As the society closed their office in Weyburn, the Parks Department looked at relocating the rock to River Park.
The board was also told that Coun. Winston Bailey and Ron Evans recently won their bid for a two-hour concert by Private Drive at a Cystic Fibrosis fundraiser, and are now seeking permission from the Parks Board to host the concert in Jubilee Park this summer to kick-start the 2017 project for Habitat for Humanity. The event will be at no cost to the city, and only donations to the Habitat for Humanity project will be accepted.
