Councillors are invited to the Northern Ontario Premiere of the international award-winning film Watermark on June 6 at the Capitol Centre during the regular meeting Monday night.
Bridges, roads and rezoning issues dominated City Council Monday night.
First council heard from Galt Street residents Andre Corbeil and Monique Peters who opposed the motion that will see rezoning on the street that will allow for the construction of a triplex.
Corbeil noted that the number of people can grow to an uncomfortable number of adults versus that of a single family dwelling.
He notes that parking will become an issue, or student housing and at the same time driving down property values.
“In putting a triplex in the number of adults compared to a detached semi-detached can be three fold the number of adults,” Corbeil tells BayToday.
“It’s going to be causing visibility issues and within years there is going to be an accident on that street and I don’t want to be the one calling the ambulance.”
The motion passed 6-3, one councillor abstained from the vote, in favour of the triplex so Corbeil says the residents against the rezoning will meet Tuesday take a look at options including taking the issue to the OMB.
Councillor Dave Mendicino says that certainly is the groups option to appeal to the OMB, but he is also concerned with the negative impact that has with developers.
“It’s frustrating on all counts. It’s more frustrating quite frankly for the development community because they’re starting to see that these decisions are being you know right away threatening to go to the OMB. ” he says.
“Obviously it’s everybody’s right to go to the OMB, you know developers are really starting to take notice and moving forward it could affect future development.”
John Street Bridge
A lengthy discussion about the reserve budget when Councillor Chris Mayne brought forth the motion to defer work on the John Street Bridge in favour to fix the O’Brien Street Bridge this budget year.
“Sometimes things come up unexpectedly,” states Mayne.
“There was a structural failure of the O’Brien Street crossing Chippewa Creek earlier this spring. So city staff have done a temporary fix, but the concern is it really needs a more permanent structure based on traffic. That plus some other bridges, when they looked at the failure on that bridge, let’s have a look at Chippewa Street and Milani Road and some of the others in town it was decided that these bridges really need repair on a priority basis.”
“We could have pulled money from reserve that was part of the discussion this evening. My own position is that I prefer to work within this year's budget.”
Councillor Mark King thinks that council should dip into reserves and move forward with the necessary repairs versus waiting another year.
“It’s the second time it’s been cancelled. You know we have set back the Seymour process a year and sooner or later you’ve got to catch up with this,” states King.
“You know we’ve talked about this for years about the structural deficiencies that we have here in the city and somehow someway you have to it.”
Mendicino did not agree noting that playing with reserves is dangerous and will have a negative impact on the city’s Moody’s rating.
“This is not unusual we do this on a regular basis. Our ten-year capital budget is a fluid document we move things in and out all the time,” he states.
“We do it a couple times year over the last 10 years that I've been around anyways.”
“You start using reserves to pay for stuff like that to me it just does not make sense. Within a short period of time you've been in a situation where in 10-15 years ago where our reserves were depleted.
Potholes
Meanwhile, Mayne says the city has had a bumper crop of potholes and city crews have done a great job filling them in.
He also notes that they have had 122 claims for vehicle damage due to potholes.
“We’ve almost filled 5,000 potholes at this point around the city,” he notes.
“Because the maintenance and standards have been met in all of those situations … on a smaller road in North Bay we’re allowed by the Province of Ontario either seven or 14 days’ time to repair those potholes and if it's done within that period there's no liability to the city.”
