Athabasca town council’s discussions around possible improvements to the Wood Heights Estates subdivision were moved to budget deliberations.
During last Tuesday’s town council meeting, Mathew Rosychuk, a resident of the subdivision, made a presentation to council about some of the issues surrounding the area.
“Several months ago, residents — including myself and many of the people here today — got together and we started identifying some of the key issues,” he said. “We did that by engaging a variety of people (and) engaging all of the stakeholders: the home builders in the area, the developer, the town staff, even some local businesses have expressed some interest in the process we're undergoing.”
They narrowed down the issues into three major ones: pedestrian safety along the road, the paving of Wood Heights Road, and developing a green space for families to play in the area.
According to Rosychuk, the road is “extremely busy” with traffic going in and out of the county almost constantly – many of them speeding – and many of the sections have sharp shoulders.
“There's absolutely no way for you to walk on that road safely with the amount of traffic that we're seeing on it. It's difficult to bike on,” he continued. “Basically, we're isolated from the rest of the town's trail system at the moment.”
In his presentation, he asked the town to make it a priority to connect Wood Heights with the rest of the town by either a trail system or a sidewalk.
The road itself isn’t paved, which is something that Rosychuk believes should be changed.
“We're not here today complaining about the fact that our cars are getting dirty or it's rough to drive on,” he said. “There's some safety concerns as mentioned with the amount of traffic on that road, the sharp shoulders and the speeding.”
Paving the road, he said, can only bring good things to the town: a paved road will attract more people to settle in Wood Heights Estates, which is one of the only subdivisions currently building new homes.
He also brought up the notion of community equality.
“We're taxpaying citizens; why do we not have a paved road, (but) residents of Cornwall have paved roads, or Hees Estates? Simply put, we just want the same as everyone else, we don't want more,” he said.
The last issue is the lack of a playground in the area. Wood Heights Estates, says Rosychuk, is predominantly young families and there’s no place for the children to play.
“Because we're a kilometre out of town, it's not like we can send our children into a park or just load them in the vehicle whenever we can,” he said.
The development’s owner has stated that he’d donate the land for a playground or green space if the road to the subdivision were to be paved.
The councillors seemed to be impressed with the presentation overall.
“I'd just like to thank you, because your process of engaging your entire community, followed by business owners and presenting not demands, but evidence on what you need, costs, etcetera… this is phenomenal in my mind,” councillor Tanu Tyszka-Evans said.
However, there was quite a bit of discussion on the items brought up. Although many councillors agreed they were important, there was argument on the priority.
“First of all, it's under development. Talk about maintenance of roads, well … things are still under construction, so (big vehicles are still driving on the roads),” said Mayor Roger Morrill. “There are a lot of reasons not to proceed with it at (this) time.
“There's still a lot of developing occurring, a lot of expansion. I think there are still some issues. Again, I share your concerns, and we'll do what we can that's reasonable.”
Rosychuk responded by stating there will always be large vehicles on the road because it’s a main route to the county.
Councillor Shelly Gurba agreed that road improvements should be more important to the town.
“I think we need to make it a priority that this paving project becomes the number-one priority for this council,” she said. “It's been put on the backburner so many times, and we keep on talking about wanting to do it, but we're not acting upon it yet.”
In terms of the playground, there was no arguing that there should be a playground, but many of the councillors didn’t like that the developer was holding the playground “hostage” for a paved road.
“If the argument is paving would increase the property value, I mean, us putting in a playground would also increase the property value,” said councillor Nichole Adams. “I'm not opposed to a playground. I would like to see a playground, and eventually I would like to see that road paved. I don't think that we need to consider just buying out the developer (for land for the playground).”
There was no real discussion about the trail system, other to say there might be an issue connecting it due to the intersection near A&W.
Councillor Tim Verheaghe made a motion to move the discussion to budget deliberations when there was more information on the costs, which passed unanimously.
