St. Albert will spend another $1.1 million on road, sidewalk and bus pad work without spending any more money than budgeted for 2013.
City council on Monday gave its approval for a plan to perform additional work using surplus funds in the capital budget for this year. Due to a confluence of strange factors outside the city’s control, many of its tenders have come in below budget, leading to a surplus of funds available within the capital reserves.
Both the province and Edmonton have reduced the number of projects they are completing this summer, said director of engineering Tracy Allen, meaning bids on St. Albert’s projects are coming in well under budget.
“So there are additional funds within the approved budget,” Allen said.
Allen and the city are looking at three projects in particular. The bulk of the surplus funds – approximately $800,000 – will be spent repairing a pair of road base failures. Dean Crescent and a portion of Bellerose Drive have both failed.
Allen said more geotechnical testing is first needed to determine the extent of the problem and how long it will take for the city to repair the damage.
“We would then communicate with residents on what we would like to do, whether that was going to take three days or if we work around other schedules or events,” Allen said.
This is the second of the last three summers the city has had to repair a road failure in Deer Ridge. In 2011 the city had to rebuild Dalhousie Street, Deerborne Drive and Dufferin Street after all three were discovered to have failed.
There were no failures in Deer Ridge last year but the city did spend the summer rebuilding the entire length of Delage Crescent.
Allen said the failure on Dean Crescent is the result of a frost heave. As for Bellerose Drive, it is a 10-metre section northeast of Erin Ridge Drive that will need rebuilding.
The city will also spend another $218,309 to repair more sidewalks and retrofit bus pads. Mayor Nolan Crouse zeroed in on the sidewalk repair program, saying it needed more attention than it has been getting from the city recently.
“Sidewalks are pretty personal,” Crouse said. “They’re in front of our homes. They are where people trip or fall. I think it’s pretty critical. We’ve shortchanged that program after the last few years.”
The city will invest $130,823 to perform more road resurfacing, specifically along the entire length of Range Road 540.
The money used for the projects comes from grants the city has received. All of the proposed work qualifies as a proper use of the grant money, Allen said.
