The Municipality of Chatham-Kent will be moving ahead with plans to fix up a rural bridge east of Tilbury.
During Monday night's meeting, Councillor Karen Kirkwood-Whyte brought forward a motion asking that the municipality divest and close McDougall Line Bridge. The bridge is located on McDougall Line at Merlin Road and is a common shortcut for farm vehicles to get onto Queen's Line (Hwy. 2) from Merlin Road.
In September 2019, council voted in favour of replacing the deteriorating bridge for just under $3-million. During the meeting, council heard from several local farmers who argued that closing the bridge would create safety concerns and increase farm vehicle traffic on Queen's Line.
Kirkwood-Whyte was hoping that council would reconsider the previous decision and instead redirect the $2.7-million to higher priority infrastructure projects. Kirkwood-Whyte motion's noted that safety concerns by closing the bridge would be addressed by other projects already in the works and that the funding for replacing McDougall Line Bridge hasn't been committed to yet.
Because her motion involved reconsidering a decision that was already made by council, Kirkwood-Whyte first needed to get a 2/3 vote by her fellow councillors in favour of bringing the motion to the floor for discussion and voting.
At the beginning of the meeting, council once again heard from multiple area farmers who expressed disappointment and surprise that the bridge was coming back up for discussion once again.
Some councillors echoed those comments.
"We are in the middle of a process for the tender for this bridge," said Councillor Melissa Harrigan. "We've had more than one conversation about it. It is ultimately something that I would have hoped would be passed by now, I believe that's something that's shared by local residents as well. There's not a need to reconsider this motion mid-process. There's a larger danger in council going back on decisions that we've made more than one and two years ago after having thorough conversations."
Although Councillor Michael Bondy said he wasn't sure if he'd support Kirkwood-Whyte's motion, he was one of the councillors that were open to the idea of talking about it again.
"If there's ever an impetus to re-evaluate a council decision, then I think we should," he said. "Sometimes we make decisions and frankly, we can change our minds... I personally think if there's some sort of desire to re-examine something to further the discussion, why not?"
Ultimately, 11 councillors voted against bringing Kirkwood-Whyte's motion to the floor for discussion while seven voted in favor, resulting in it not coming back to council for reconsideration.