WOODLANDS COUNTY-Woodlands County hopes to continue to provide snow-clearing services for portions of secondary highways 661, 33, and 658.
Whether or not they will be able to continue to do so will be contingent if whether or not they can come to an agreement with Ledcor.
Councillors, on Aug. 4, during their meeting via teleconference, gave infrastructure services director Andre Bachand the authority to attempt do exactly that.
In 2020/2021, the municipality had a subcontract with Ledcor to provide winter maintenance service on the previously mentioned highways to the Athabasca River north of Blueridge in the Timeu and Goose Lake areas.
The reason why the county approached Ledcor and Carillion Canada before that is that residents were complaining about how the highways were being maintained and that since the county snow removal equipment would be travelling the same highways to get to the municipality's roads and because of the location of their works yard, that it would be more efficient for the county to do the snow removal.
"We dedicated one truck to the project," he said. "We would go out and plow the highways and whenever it intersected with one to the county's roads, we would clock off, do our road, and clock back in when we resumed plowing the highway."
The majority of the time, the county would provide these services from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. to correspond with public works shifts, however, Ledcor would often request service after hours depending on the time of the snowfall.
However, most of the time Bachand said, they were not able to accommodate the request due to staffing issues. In these situations, Ledcor would use their own equipment.
The information package states that the county received $432,296.08 from Ledcor for this service. The county estimates its net expenses were $353,540.96 utilizing the county's hourly rates for snowplows as well as a contribution to reserves.
In future agreements, Alberta Transportation requests that the highways are done first without interruption.
"The truck then is to go back to the yard and if there is any material left on the truck, it is to be unloaded and weighed," Bachand said, adding this amount would be invoiced.
It is only after this is done that the truck would be reloaded and sent to do county roads. He also noted that the unloading and weighing would be at the county's expense.
"Alberta Transportation is also asking us to have standby operators to be sent during the off-hours," Bachand said.
Although he is still in discussion with Ledcor and Alberta Transportation about the latter, he feels that it doesn't make sense to ignore municipal roads on the first pass.
"It's inefficient and we are in a stalemate with that one," he said. "In reality, our truck could easily do those roads and the highways."
Goose Lake/Freeman River Dale McQueen said he did not like what Alberta Transportation was insinuating.
"It sounds like they are saying we are stealing," he said.
McQueen also questioned if Ledcor ever sent extra equipment when the county wasn't available.
"I’d like to know what highways or times they were sending them because the only thing I saw on [Highway 658] was one of their pickups chasing our sanding trucks to see if we were doing a better job than they were," he said.
Bachand understood McQueen's frustration, saying everything was documented. He said the drivers would log their time spent maintaining the highways, adding it was an easy calculation to accurately estimate the amount of material used on the county roads and highways.
Whitecourt Central Coun. Ron Govenlock said he was confused as to why Alberta Transportation would be involved in the process as Ledcor was the contractor for the area.
"[Alberta Transportation] is involved because they were sympathetic to Woodlands County council's request to improve the maintenance of Highway 658," Bachand said, adding only two municipalities have similar contracts with provincial contractors.
