WESTLOCK — Westlock County is going ahead with shoulder pulls this year on 30 miles of roads starting July 10.
The decision was made at the June 23 meeting, but it quickly switched from the benefits of shoulder pulls over road patching to a councillor’s request to add more miles to the existing project.
The agreement with Re-call Gravel Systems for the work dates back to 2019, when $1.1 million for shoulder pulls was first introduced into the budget. Adverse weather at the time prevented the work from being done.
The cost breakdown for the project works out to $570,000 for the shoulder pull proper, $300,000 for the gravel, and $180,000 for gravel spreading.
Although the contract is signed for 30 miles of roads, and the topic has now been in county council three times before last week, Coun. Fred Slobodian said he wanted to add an 8.5-mile portion of road—Township Road 630 from Highway 44 to Larkspur Village—to the current schedule.
It would add about $300,000 to the current cost of the project, he estimated.
“If there was ever a time that a road needed to be pulled, this was the time. We have the funds, when we already had the road on the books to get that and we didn’t do it because of funding, because we used the funding for something else,” said Slobodian.
Part of that stretch, from Highway 801 to the village, was discussed in 2018, but didn’t materialize.
The funds Slobodian references come from an unallocated $900,000 in Municipal Sustainability Initiative grant money the county received, plus a $200,000 carryover from 2019.
But it’s precisely that sum of money that convinced deputy reeve Brian Coleman to agree that shoulder pulls and road patching can both be done this year.
At the end of May, Coleman told councillors that they should scrap the shoulder pulls for 2020 in favour of patching roads, but changed his opinion June 9 when administration pointed to the large sum of money still available for projects.
“We as a councillor, picking and choosing a road that administration has not pointed out needed to be done… It’s just that thing about priorities,” Coleman said in response to Slobodian’s request.
Slobodian instead asked councillors not to be “offended by the question I’m going to ask,” but wanted to know how many had the same experience with graders as him.
“I’m trying to spend money smart, that’s what I’m trying to do here,” he said.
Director of infrastructure Al Scott clarified that TWP 630 from Hwy 44 to 801 was part of the shoulder pull project they had planned for 2021.
No decision was made regarding Slobodian’s request, but administration is looking into what it would take to add that specific road portion to the shoulder pull schedule for 2020.
