OLDS — Town of Olds staff plan to be more proactive this year on repairing streets and sidewalks as well as street sweeping.
The municipality's infrastructure director Adrian Pedro gave that message to council during the March 10 meeting.
Coun. Dan Daley said potholes and large street repairs seem to be a “hot topic,” and one for which he receives the most complaints.
“They talk to me about the big pothole in front of their house, or that they have to drive through every day going to work or what-have-you,” he said.
Daley asked if town staff will be taking “a real hard look” at the condition of streets in Olds and “investing some money in into these repairs strategically so that that we can maybe get the number down.”
Pedro said roads are continually deteriorating. He’s observed some of that in his own drives around the community.
He said residents are encouraged to contact the Town of Olds about deteriorating road conditions so those problems can be added to the municipality's inventory.
Pedro said staff will be going out and inspecting the condition of streets and roads.
He noted that council had recently authorized the purchase of additional street repair equipment.
“The intent there is that we would do more in-house and contract out less, so in theory, we have a more proactive pothole or patching program,” Pedro said.
Daley said, “That's great news. Thank you very much. I'm glad to hear that we're attacking that head-on."
Coun. Wanda Blatz asked if town staff are going to continue relaying on residents to contact them in regard to deteriorating sidewalks or if they’re going to check sidewalks themselves.
Pedro confirmed that historically, staff have relied on receiving complaints about sidewalk conditions via the Town’s Report A Problem service on its website.
“This year, we are going to do it a little bit differently,” he said.
“We are taking that list as a baseline, and then we'll be actually going out and doing inspections on the roads and sidewalks themselves.”
