WESTLOCK – Westlock County councillors have signed off on a bevy of updated transportation and agricultural services policies, while sending one back to address service levels for snow removal.
At their April 11 regular meeting, councillors voted unanimously to approved ag services policies 6200-02, 6200-03, 6200-04, 6200-05, 6200-06, 6200-07, 6200-08, 6200-09, and 6200-10, along with transportation policies 3200-001, 3200-002, 3200-003, 3200-004, 3200-006, 3200-007, 3200-008, 3200-009, 3200-010, 3200-011, and 3200-012. Councillors spent close to an hour at their March 23 committee of the whole meeting listening to agriculture and environmental services manager Don Medcke and transportation and utilities general manager James Plain explaining the revisions.
Only Policy 3200-005, which spells out the municipality’s “role in maintaining safe travel on county infrastructure by performing regular road maintenance and snow removal on rural roadways”, was held back for further work as councillors want to see service levels added, specifically around snow removal. Coun. Isaac Skuban, recalling the previous debate, asked for a slight revision in the document to spell out a “standard” regarding timelines while noting that “if the weather isn’t good, we won’t always be able to meet that standard … especially in the winter.”
“I would support that. We probably all receive those phone calls, where there’s a couple of inches of snow on the ground and there’s a call asking why the grader isn’t out yet. So, I think if we can refer to our policies and talk specifically about when residents can generally expect to see the graders out there, that will help us a lot,” said Coun. Stuart Fox-Robinson.
CAO Tony Kulbisky also said they’ll also expand Section 8 of the policy, snow removal priorities and standards, to offer more explanation as to what the differences are between arterial and collector roads.
“We want to define those to show that if we have a major snow dump that people can expect within three to five days that we’ll have certain ones taken care … just to explain the priorities so people understand it more,” said Kulbisky.
Specifically, the ag policies passed cover soil conservation, pest control, the pest control appeal committee, weed control, the weed control appeal panel, vegetation management, clubroot management, the tansy incentive program and equipment rental.
On the transportation side, the revised policies cover rural mailboxes on road allowances, snowplowing of private driveways, agreements for right-of-way or borrow, construction and maintenance of approaches and culverts, road construction, grader plug-in, dust control, placement of stop and yield signs, shop access, county equipment use and repairs, street lighting and equipment and vehicle replacement.
