YORKTON - If there had been any doubt, the final tendered costs associated with York Road in the city shows exactly how expensive addressing key infrastructure needs will be.
The complete reconstruction of York Road, which will begin in May will cost taxpayers $26,600,000. Yes, just a bit more than $4 million is coming from the province, but those are ultimately taxpayer dollars too.
That is a huge dollar amount, and it will basically take the city’s entire road construction budget for years as the debt associated with the project is dealt with.
But, drive around the city and there are numerous streets where one feels as though they are driving in a video game tasked with trying to avoid the holes rather than be bounced in the seat as tire hits one.
Now, it might be reasoned that fixing streets can be achieved with a ‘shave and pave’ after all skimming off the deteriorated asphalt and applying new was good enough for Broadway Street the city’s main thoroughfare.
However, a shave and pave approach is very much a band-aid applied with fingers crossed that the old water and sewer lines buried beneath continue to function even though they are really already well-past expected years of functionality.
If the old pipes fail, and they do in the city all the time, the city would then be tearing through new asphalt to fix an issue they were aware existed.
Of course, therein lies the problem, infrastructure; pavement, sidewalks, sewer and water lines, are old – very, very old with some dating back to the 1960s or earlier – throughout much of the city.
The amount spent annually on renewal seems like a lot, but would require decades to update the entire infrastructure system. City administration and Council are aware of the deficit, but what is not known is how to address the problem in terms of the cold, hard cash needed?
That brings us back to the premise of this editorial’s opening line citing the cost of ‘key’ infrastructure needs.
We are at a point in Yorkton, and in other communities in the province, and even provincially, when we need to determine what those ‘key’ needs are and focus dollars almost exclusively on those.
Was a new public works building needed? How does its need compare to a golf clubhouse in terms of ‘key’ infrastructure.
How do paved trails rate against the municipal cost of a new hospital?
Is a proposed pump bike track ‘key infrastructure’ when millions will be required for a new sewage treatment facility?
Typically we as a community would like to see balance in spending.
But with the massive infrastructure upgrade deficit, and the costs associated with it – near $27 million just for York Road – balance may no longer be appropriate to the city's future core needs.
