Twp. roads need more funding

A preservation strategy for maintaining its roads would require Woolwich spending $2.5 million each year, with the township falling behind on even that target, says a new report presented this week to council.

The situation gets much worse when going beyond maintenance to reconstruction projects, which boosts the cost to $7.1 million each year. Actual spending has been much less. In 2017, for instance, the budgeted amount is $1.8 million.

An updated roads needs study, presented by Dave Anderson of 4 Roads Management Services, found the general state of Woolwich’s roads has deteriorated in recent years, largely due to the gap between the work that’s needed to be done and the amount of money allocated to road maintenance and repairs.

Overall, the township has a total of $47,008,155 of pressing reconstruction needs, with a further $27,995,424 needed for maintenance within the next 10 years.

Anderson noted the township would be much better off spending money sooner to maintain roads – keeping the good roads good – than to let them fall apart to the stage where reconstruction is the only option.

That strategy, however, would require the township to adjust its spending priorities, allocating more of the budget to roads and bridges, which also require a similar injection of spending.

“In addition to generally requiring more money each year in various operating and capital budget lines in order to maintain the level of service, strong consideration needs to be given to adjusting the appropriate operating budget line items to keep up with required maintenance as the township’s road network grows. The additional cost to maintain these new roadways should come from new assessment tax levy or from other sources identified through a consideration of full lifecycle costing,” manager of engineering Richard Sigurdson noted in a report.