Council will be re petitioning the residents of the 4100 and 4200 blocks of 2nd Avenue regarding the proposed, and previously approved, paving project that was scheduled to break ground this summer.
The decision to give the referendum another chance stemmed from an earlier request from Gavin and Amy Murdoch for council to reconsider the project based on concerns they had with the Local Area Service policy.
Council referred those concerns to staff, who came back at last Tuesday’s meeting recommending that council change the LAS policy. Now, corner lots will pay 50 per cent of their frontage fees for the paving project, instead of 25 per cent, as was previously written into the policy. Their vote will also count for 50 per cent as well.
“The policy in past had been misrepresented and that misrepresentation carried on into the future,” Deputy Mayor Jo Ann Groves said. “In looking at it we decided to be fair to the residents we needed to take a step back.”
This will give them a second chance on whether or not the residents of those two blocks want to pave under the LAS or leave it as is — a dirt road. Under the previous LAS policy, the town would have been responsible for $423,350 of the cost, while property owners would have been responsible for $326,850.
The original referendum saw the 4100 block 55 per cent in favour for the project, while the 4200 block had 70.6 per cent in favour. It will be interesting to see if both blocks pass again, Groves said.
“It will be interesting to see what does come back now after this long,” Groves said.
If the residents decide yes, they would still like their roads paved, then the project would have to be bumped to 2012 due to the time it takes for the second referendum. The town has applied for a Towns for Tomorrow grant to cover their portion of the paving project that they expect to hear back from shortly. The project is contingent on that grant, Groves said. If the project is a go staff were fairly confident that the grant could be extended to next year.