(by Margot Grant)
Hillcrest, Tricklebrook, Martin Road, Brookside Place, Trickle Court will not be paved.
About 30 residents attended the council meeting on May 2. When Mayor Wayne Rowe said that Tricklebrook and Hillcresst will not be paved people shouted “You’re not listening to us!” and “You spend money on other things!” Mayor Rowe threatened to adjourn the meeting if they did not keep quiet.
“Paving is not going to happen,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”
Councillor White told the audience that this kind of conversation (shouting) was not going to be helpful to resolve the issue. He asked everyone to be respectful.
People were allowed to ask questions during the Inquiries item on the agenda. This item is not recorded in the minutes.
During Inquiries, mayor Rowe explained that the town is in dire straits financially. Renewing water pipes and sewer infrastructure from the 1960s has been given priority over road maintenance.
The town realized six or seven years ago that major infrastructure upgrades were going to be needed, he said. Money was being set aside for renewal of water pipes and sewage infrastructure and the town applied for grants. The work will be completed in 2025.
“I don’t have a solution for the roads,” mayor Rowe said. The roads are bad on the Bluff, on parts of Gower Point Road, but we just don’t have the capacity. Chipseal has not worked out to the satisfaction of citizens. It will likely not be pursued further. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
When residents asked questions about a decrease of their property values, damage to vehicles parked on chipsealed roads and health issues caused by the dust, mayor Rowe said that he did not know what to say further about the matter.
I truly appreciate your engagement and interest in Town governance, and must make a few points.
It is key to recognize that Seacot and Mountainview are getting worse. The other chipsealed areas are getting better. The other areas are still nowhere near adequate, but if we’re going to allocate EMERGENCY FUNDS there is no question they need to go to the dust/pothole bowl at Seacot and Mountainview. But it was very hard to find these funds in our current budget.
Your article seems to suggest that repaving ALL the chipsealed roads was on the table, which is not the case. In fact repaving NONE of the roads was on the table; however we’ve managed to find money to lay asphalt on the busiest (and dustiest) corridor of the neighbourhood. No one knew this was possible before today, but we spent hours in meetings to make it happen.
Speaking of funding, I never heard the mayor say “the town is in dire straits financially.” This is not the case; we were just audited this month; so I encourage you to take a look at our public finances for yourself. They’re in good shape, which our auditor confirms.
Also I would hope you would relate the message from the meeting that Council is committed to more public engagement about the other roads and the overall chip-seal/paving program. You reported the catcalls from the audience; however the residents from Tricklebrook and Hillcrest who bravely spoke at the end of the meeting were understandably upset about the state of their roads, but very reasonable.
One of the most vocal speakers made the point that if Hillcrest is going to be chipsealed, what else can we do to beautify the neighbourhood? (i.e. mentioning the drainage-ditch “bunkers,” etc.) This is the conversation that we need to pursue as a community—in addition to the bigger conversation of how are we going to fund road repaving overall. Tricklebrook (+Brookside and Trickle Court) is an example of where the road should’ve BEEN LEFT ALONE. With better Council process/oversight, I am sure it would have. We also need to work on this oversight process…
It’s very easy to conclude from my experience that no government at any level is anywhere near “perfect,” (yet always has critics expecting it to be so) and also that ALL governments make a lot of mistakes. The key to all of this is to engage community. We have started to do so (with results, tonight, that your article downplays tremendously) and will continue to do so regarding this sorry chipseal situation.
Silas
I don’t understand. If the town’s finances are in good shape, like you say, why can’t Tricklebrook and Hillcrest be paved?
I would also like to dispute that these roads are getting better. They are not. And as the weather improves, they are increasingly dusty.
They just were paved, with chipseal. We need to keep monitoring these ones–as they will hopefully turn out as well as other chipseal roads on the Coast, like the ones I’m driving on this afternoon in Wilson Creek and Davis Bay. Perhaps that still won’t be good enough… but it’s definitely the next community conversation that we need to have with you and other residents.
Mountainview-Seacot was clearly a faulty job though and even the contractor acknowledged that and was going to come back to fix it (he still may, but in preparation for asphalt). The dust and loose gravel that has been on all these roads has been totally unacceptable, though, in my view. My observation of improved conditions was on Sunday. I’m continuing to check on the progress of these roads and listen to residents’ concerns (feel free to show me how it’s getting worse–my number is 604-741-7023) and I know staff and other members of Council are, too. I’d be happy to explain more about the Town’s financial position, too–that’s something I’ve been talking to many concerned residents about.
Counselor White, we would be interested to know where these chipseal roads in Wilson Creek and Davis Bay that you consider acceptable are located. It should be noted that those areas are more rural and not in the middle of town. How can chipseal have been considered acceptable for a village neighborhood where children expect to be able to play and ride their bikes on the street, not to mention mothers pushing strollers and the elderly being able to walk our streets safely.
Did Gibsons Council invest in any research before approving such a scheme? Chipseal is generally only considered acceptable for ‘rural’ and low traffic areas. With just a little research, we have found that in other instances in towns where chipseal has been used for cost saving it has been an “abysmal failure“, with councils having to admit the experiment was a huge mistake that ended up costing them more in the long run.
Please stop trying to ‘gaslight’ us by stating; “the roads are getting better,” this is frankly insulting. We live on Tricklebrook Way and we know better than anyone else the status of our road and the issues we experience every day – not just on a Sunday. Please don’t try to tell us it can all be fixed by regularly sending maintenance trucks down our streets to sweep and wash the road.
By their action, Council has lowered our property values and affected our quality of life; and by your own admission, this situation should never have happened. Regardless of how this all came about re: the lack of communication between staff and Council; ultimately the responsibility for this reprehensible situation lies with Gibsons Council. As taxpayers we expect the mistake to be rectified, and by this we mean to REHABILITATE ALL THE ROADS affected by the chipseal ‘debacle’ to a standard that is acceptable to the community – not to what you, the Mayor or Council consider ‘good enough’.
We commend some counselors for admitting that a mistake has been made, and appreciate Council approving the re-paving of Seacot and Mountain view, but our concern is that this may very well be a case of political ‘divide and conquer’. While we understand the financial challenges and limitations, it needs to be a priority to rectify this colossal mistake in its entirety, and we expect a commitment that ALL THE ROADS affected will be repaved with asphalt.
Apologies are just a start, we are not sure that much more can be accomplished by further monitoring and discussion; Council already knows what needs to be done to remedy the situation.
Thank you Councillor White for your comments regarding chip seal roads and last night’s meeting. It is certainly good that Council is now ‘engaging with the community’ even though late in the day of the Council’s tenure.
I understand that one of the jobs of municipal councils, a basic one in fact, is to repair and maintain the various infrastructure under their management; sewers, water and roads being the most obvious. The fact that the auditor has pronounced the Council in fine financial shape, certainly begs the question of why the choice of where they have spent their money has not been on the many roads in need of repair and repaving?
I endorse the comment above, as walking around the neighborhood with my dog, I do not see any improvement in the other chip seal roads.
Having attended many meetings during my life, I find the Council’s choice to ‘gag’ speakers on
many occasions interesting. Last night, when Item 4.2.2 came up on the agenda, in the form of a motion, there was no room for engaging with the community, or discussion of any sort, apart from at the end of the meeting. The motion was passed swiftly, and the meeting moved on.
Thanks for that input, Natania. I am still of the view that getting the Mountainview-Seacot roads paved with asphalt, ASAP, is a tremendous and positive step forward in this overall chip-seal debacle. That is why I take issue with the negative tone of the article. Where else can we start if it is not to correct the most faultily exectuted and heavily used section of road–and also include more incoming paving funding in our borrowing bylaw? As I mentioned in a previous post the last time I checked all the roads was on Sunday and I definitely observed some improvements—I will keep checking though and am totally open to being shown that they are worsening just as severely as Seacot-Mountainview is…
In addition, on community engagement I wouldn’t say the motion passed that swiftly. I certainly spoke to it… But engaging the community at council meetings, which have to follow quite strict rules and tend to encourage impersonal, adversarial dialogue (and yelling), isn’t a great way to do things. The McClymont’s set up better dialogue than this in their driveway with 30 minutes’ notice… Councillor Lumley is passionate about having more discussion with the neighbourhoods so he and I are working on an event. The rest of Council supports this effort as well.
Are your running for mayor?
I’m still in my third year of a four-year term as a councillor. I need to focus on fulfilling the role that people elected to do for the next 18 months. I was elected on a platform to improve our community conversations and feel I need to achieve more on this before committing my family to another four years in any position.