Midwestern

A-C-W Reeve Says Budget Eaten Up By Paving Costs

The Reeve of Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh Township says paving took up a significant part of their budget last year and he expects that to continue in 2018.

Ben Van Diepenbeek says they did just over a million dollars worth of paving last year including seven blocks of Belfast Rood from Kingsbridge Line east to St. Helens as well as a couple of streets in St, Helens that hadn't been paved. Van Diepenbeek points out they did receive over 500-thousand dollars from K2 Energy to cover the damage done to Belfast Road during the erection of their wind turbines. He says they have more paving to be done in 2018, including a couple of lakeshore roads.

Van Diepenbeek explains a major project they'll be considering is the road to Camp Kintail that has to be re-constructed but to do that the municipality first has to purchase the property. He says there's about two kilometres of road and the municipality currently owns only a small part of it so the cost of completing that project will be significant.

“This year we did just over a million dollars worth of paving. We did the Belfast Road, seven blocks, all the way from Kingsbridge Line east to St. Helens. Then we finished a couple of streets in St. Helens that weren't paved yet, so now St. Helens is all paved.”

“It's a long way back, it's about a two kilometre road that needs to reconstructed and possibly paved at some point. But first of all we need to buy the land. We only own 28 feet and we need to buy the balance to get to 66 feet.”

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