City eliminates $1.5 million in paving from budget approved $4.1 million plan

Swift Current City Council approved $1.5 million less spending for their 2020 asphalt and concrete program as a result of the financial impact of the COVID19 pandemic on city finances.

At their April 20 meeting council approved $2.6 million in projects for the upcoming year, a drop from the $4.1 million which had been approved in the 2020 municipal budget. The tender was awarded to Mobile Paving.

“We had to take another good hard look at what we were going to accomplish in 2020. At this point we’ve reduced the total budget in that contract from $4.1 million by a million and a half, leaving $2.6 million in the program for this year,” explained Mitch Minken, the General Manager of Infrastructure and Operations.

The revised program still contains spending $1.5 million on the 11th Ave. N.W. project, but the city wide paving and sidewalk rehabilitation program will only receive $550,000, with $350,000 earmarked for downtown sidewalk rehabilitation, with an additional $150,000 for paved lanes.

“Our program is designed to be two things: to be affordable of course for a city our size, but also to try and keep up with the replacement that we need so that we don’t get way behind.”

“Probably the biggest aspect is one of schedule. It’s work that we’re not going to get done this year, which just defers it off into the future, so that just puts us a bit behind.”

Minken said the deferred work allows the City to focus on their higher priority projects.

The largest project of the year will surround the 11th Ave. N.W. full rehabilitation project which will involve a realignment of the roadway and improvements to the Transcanada Highway off and on ramps plus the North and South Service Roads.

Traffic lights will also be added in this area to better control traffic.

He pointed out that there will be traffic restrictions and closures during the course of that project.

However the initial paving project for the year will be the completion of the Battleford Trail and Central Ave. reconfiguration project which was part of last year’s budget. Weather depending that work will get underway by mid May, and is expect to take between a month and six week to complete.

Council also approved an asphalt maintenance contract with Mobile Paving to handle maintenance work including pothole patching caused by winter freeze/thaw cycles, localized roadway failure repairs, as well as repairing asphalt at locations were work was done on water, sanitary and Light and Power utility repairs.

This contract has a maximum amount of $400,000, and over the past five years the city has required annual averages of between $350,000 to $400,000 in work.

“Some winters are better. Some are worse. This one is probably a little on the worse side of average because we had so many freeze/thaws through the winter. The decreased traffic over the last while its held pretty steady,” Minken said.