Council hit the brakes on authorizing some proposed changes to downtown construction scheduling on Monday after realizing the magnitude of the scope shift.
Those changes included a delay to removing angle parking along Perron Street, and a new proposal of putting parallel parking along St. Anne Street near St. Albert Place.
A vote on the staff-recommended changes were postponed until a council meeting on May 9.
Transportation manager Dean Schick presented the proposal on Monday evening that would change previously arranged scheduling of road work and other construction downtown.
Examples of the changes include pushing back the installation of parallel parking along Perron Street, adding St. Anne Street parking, and moving up pedestrian improvements for St. Anne Street from 2025/2026 to this year.
The scheduling changes, if authorized, would mean that St. Anne Street and Perron Street would not face road closures at the same time.
But that means putting off council direction to change Perron Street back to parallel parking.
“Angle parking would remain for at least one more year,” Schick said. That’s in part so more parking is added elsewhere – in this case along St. Anne Street – before the amount of parking available on Perron Street is reduced.
The changes were in part brought forward to address traffic disruption, to eliminate the potential for some lost costs by doing separate projects and to maximize efficiency when it comes to completing the plans for downtown, said the report.
Coun. Tim Osborne suggested the postponement, noting he could foresee council members having several possible amendments to the plans. He wants the chance for council to understand changes and get questions answered before proceeding.
Osborne also noted the magnitude of the decision as a reason to pause.
“This is a substantial change to what we’re doing,” Osborne said. He said the lack of public consultation concerned him a bit.
Coun. Sheena Hughes said she thought council needs more time.
“Basically we’re doing budget on the fly here,” Hughes said.
Schick was suggesting paying for the slightly more than $1 million in work by using $730,000 in savings from the 2016 asphalt overlay program. The remainder of the money needed was already budgeted for work in the downtown this year.
