Loyola councillor paints potholes to protest lack of cash for repairs
City says it’s focused on repaving roads, while some smell an election-year stunt
Councillor Jeremy Searle is painting potholes white in an effort to alert drivers to the tire-eating dangers that lurk in the folds of Loyola district’s crumbling asphalt while protesting what he says is a lack of municipal investment in Montreal’s aging road infrastructure.
“The last time I painted white circles around potholes was after the ice storm of 1998, when the roads were severely broken up,” said Searle, wearing white overalls on his front steps in Notre-Damede-Grâce on Thursday, his shoes splashed with paint. “This was not then or now to bring discredit to city services that do their best, but to inform them and warn the public who do not need to break their axles.”
Searle, representing the Loyola district, said the borough has a solid team in place for repairing road infrastructure, but the funding is insufficient, making it impossible for crews to do their job properly. Instead, he argued, Montreal’s administration is splurging potential repair money on the city’s 375th anniversary.
That $300 million in anniversary spending, he said, could be used to completely refurbish about 400 kilometres of roads and sidewalks, as such renovations cost about $750,000 per kilometre. Côtedes-Neiges–N.D.G. has just 229 kilometres of roads, he noted.
Searle, an independent councillor, is buying the water-soluble paint out of his own pocket, he said, and he plans to reapply it every time it rains until the potholes are repaired. On Thursday morning, he began on Westmore and Fielding Avenues, pouring diluted paint from a gas can.
Drivers are forced to stare at the road surface rather than looking for pedestrians, vehicles and other street activity, Searle said.
“It’s extremely dangerous. If this isn’t fixed, people could die.”
Étienne Brunet, spokesperson for borough mayor Russell Copeman, called this an election-year stunt. The borough’s blue-collar workers have been out filling potholes with a special machine at a normal rate, but the best way to repair these issues is to repave the streets — and that’s been a focus of the administration.
“Last year, we did 21 kilometres of streets and this year we will be doing just about 30 kilometres,” said Brunet, noting sidewalks are repaired as needed.
“In this mandate only, we will have done more than one third of the streets in the borough. That’s full repaving.”
The borough invested $15 million in road repairs in 2016 and another $20 million will be spent in 2017, he said.
Noah Sidel, a Connaught Ave. resident, said he is not impressed with Searle’s “transparent” attempt to attract votes.
Potholes are a city-wide issue rather than just a Loyola problem, he said. Sidel remembers Searle saying he would fix Fielding Ave. during his 2013 re-election campaign, but, he said, that hasn’t happened.
“As our city councillor, he is supposed to be representing us through the duration of his mandate, not only six months away from an election,” Sidel said.
“The first time he’s going out into the street with white paint to circle potholes strangely coincides with the lead-up to an election for which he is trying to get some good publicity after years of terrible publicity.”