Counties offers road-building grants to municipalities
Good news from the counties for PrescottRussell municipalities trying to work out road improvement priorities for their capital works budgets this year. All eight member municipalities will now share in an annual $2 million roadworks grant from the counties.
“It’s a win-win situation,” said Marc Clermont, public works director for the United Counties of Prescott-Russell (UCPR), during the counties council’s April 22 session.
The annual grant is the solution Clermont and his staff devised in response to the need of UCPR member municipalities for help with their roadwork improvements.
Last year, the counties approved road transfer requests from the City of ClarenceRockland and the Town of Hawkesbury. This year saw several other municipalities present road transfer requests but the counties council is turning down those applications based on a summary report from its public works department.
The report noted that most of the roads listed for transfer to the counties do not meet the guidelines to be classed as county roads because they are not major arterial connections between municipalities within the UCPR or major traffic links to the main highway running through the counties to Ottawa. Also, the report noted that most of the municipal roads proposed for transfer to the counties are also in serious need of either repairs or upgrading.
Included in the report were five options for counties council to consider in dealing with the latest road transfer requests. They ranged from either accept or reject all the requests, to reviewing the current regional road setup.
The report urged counties council to go with the fifth option of creating a special roadworks subsidy fund for member municipalities in the UCPR.
The report noted that more commercial and residential development is taking place in Prescott-Russell, which means a larger property tax base for the counties to draw on during budget planning. Option Five would see the creation of an annual $2 million roadworks subsidy fund, drawing on that increased property tax revenue stream. The eight member municipalities in the UCPR would each receive an annual share of the subsidy fund, using a formula that takes account of their residential populations and total kilometres of municipal roads they have to maintain.
One condition of the subsidy grant is the money has to go towards roadwork projects. Municipal councils can choose what types of projects those are, from building new roads or upgrading existing ones to bridge improvements or sidewalk maintenance, and even equipment purchases necessary for road maintenance.
The City of Clarence-Rockland, The Nation municipality, and Russell Township receive the largest shares of the new annual subsidy because of their population sizes and the size of their total overall road network. Clarence-Rockland will get about $456,000 while The Nation receives about $436,000 and Russell Township about $356,000. The mayors for all three municipalities expressed satisfaction with the new UCPR subsidy program.
“We have so many roads to fix, there’s no problem with putting it (subsidy) into roads,” said Mayor Guy Desjardins of Clarence-Rockland. “I think it’s a better deal for Clarence-Rockland.”
“It’s a happy compromise,” said Mayor Pierre Leroux of Russell Township. “Our public works department will bring out a report later on what our priorities might be.”
“It will definitely all go into roads,” said Mayor François St. Amour of The Nation. “We have lots of room for where to use that money.”
For the other five member municipalities, depending on their population and road network sizes, the subsidy formula for their shares work out to about $254,000 for AlfredPlantagenet Township, about $182,000 for Champlain Township, about $145,000 for Hawkesbury, about $108,000 for Hawkesbury East, and almost $60,000 for Casselman.