BARRHEAD - The Naples Road reconstruction project is off the books for the 2024 road-building program.
County of Barrhead councillors voted 6-1 to cancel the road project that would have rebuilt approximately eight kilometres of Range Road 25, also known as the Naples Road, from Highway 18 to Township Road 605 to a high-grade gravel road. Coun. Paul Properzi, whose Division the project falls in, was opposed.
Councillors also instructed public works to contact landowners on the 2025 and 2026 road project list to secure eight kilometres of replacement for the 2024 road reconstruction season.
Public works infrastructure director Ken Hove recommended that the council remove the program because the municipality needed more support from residents to come to agreements for suitable construction materials, i.e. dirt.
"We reached out to all the owners of the quarter sections along the route, and nine [out of 14] supported the project," he said. "[Only] five would agree to contribute dirt to the project, but the landowners are considering all landscape burrows and the volumes aren't very big."
Hove added that to be efficient and most cost-effective when constructing road work, and crews should not have to haul materials more than half a mile, which they would have to do as it is likely not enough material available with those landowners they could make agreements with.
In addition, Hove said that while the road's right-of-way width is 100 feet, back-sloping agreements would also be necessary to construct the road and avoid trespassing.
"Several landowners are unwilling to sign those agreements," he said.
The project's budget, included in the 2024 Captial Budget, is $1,078,000 from a Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) grant the municipality applied for and received in 2022.
It is also worth mentioning that about 5.6 kilometres of the road, from Highway 18 to Township Road 603A, is oiled. Had the project moved forward, the cost of reoiling the road would have been $289,800, which had yet to be budgeted.
One reason the municipality did not include oiling the Naples Road in the project's budget is that the county is researching and developing "a service level prioritization matrix" to assist council in objectively determining which roads should qualify for oiling.
"With MSI program ending and transitioning to [Local Government Fiscal Framework], municipalities are strongly being urged [by the province] to allocate their remaining MSI funding fully," Hove said, adding that the county has $1,284,490 remaining, which includes the basic municipal transportation grant.
Eight projects on the 10-year construction plan are identified for the 2025-2026 construction seasons.
"We just did not want to select another five miles of road just to come up with the same problem," Hove said.
He suggested that public works contact the landowners of these various projects to see how many they could negotiate the necessary agreements with.
Reeve Doug Drozd said it was disappointing that they could not reach the necessary agreements.
"What was appealing about the Naples Road, besides the need for the work, was the ability to mobilize on-site and remain there all season long," he said. Now, we may have to jump around and do a mile here, there, and everywhere, which is inefficient."
