Council will finally talk about PDI and The Parkway

City councillors are expected to discuss The Parkway as well as the scuppered sale of Peterborough Distribution Inc.

(PDI) at a special meeting on Monday at City Hall.

Both topics that were on a meeting agenda March 26 but were deferred for lack of time that evening.

Now councillors will gather on Monday — even though they didn’t have a regular meeting scheduled — to discuss those two controversial topics.

Here’s what to expect:

The Parkway

Rather than doing a moredetailed environmental assessment of The Parkway, councillors will discuss a staff proposal to do a series of smaller transportation-related studies.

Those would include a transit route review, for instance, as well as an examination of possible traffic signal upgrades and a cycling network study.

The studies would be expected to help determine the best plan forward – which could still include a Parkway extension.

For about 70 years, the city has been debating whether to extend The Parkway as a north-south route across Peterborough. To do so would be to pave over a ribbon of green space that serves as a recreational trail, which some citizens have opposed.

Still, city council approved a $79-million plan in 2013 to complete The Parkway over 20 years as a way to alleviate traffic congestion on local roads (mostly in the city’s north end).

Yet the project stalled after more than 80 citizens appealed the Parkway plan with the provincial government, which later ordered the city to do a more-detailed environmental assessment of the corridor before construction could begin.

But now it appears city staff is recommending not starting that EA — at least not now.

The new report states that the half-dozen proposed studies would be expected to cost a total of about $3.6 million.

Some of that money has already been set aside for Parkway-related costs and some has already budgeted for transportation studies.

PDI

Councillors will review a staff report that says the city incurred about $1.1 million in expenses as it negotiated to sell Peterborough Distribution Inc. (PDI) to Hydro One over nearly two years.

The report – from city CAO Allan Seabrooke — doesn’t offer a breakdown of exactly what those expenses are.

Nor does it offer any detail about what caused Hydro One to walk away from the prospective deal, although it says councillors will soon hear more soon from the PDI board of directors.

The city’s deal to sell PDI fell through on March 9, when Hydro One announced it was pulling out of negotiations on the sale.

Hydro One had first approached the city about buying PDI in 2014. The idea was to sell the poles, wires, transformers and trucks that distribute electricity to Peterborough, Lakefield and Norwood.

In December 2016, city council voted in favour of selling

PDI to Hydro One for $105 million (although the after paying off the utility’s debts and taxes on the sale, the city would have likely received somewhere between $50 million and $55 million).

The special committee meeting takes place at 5:30 p.m. Monday at City Hall.