Payne’s aim to sell city lanes
Despite council’s decision to triple the budget for minor alley maintenance, critics contend Windsor will remain woefully behind in fixing the potholes, ruts, rubble and cracks in the city’s back lanes.
Ward 9 Coun. Hilary Payne says he has a solution — sell them off and close them down.
“They’re a constant source of problems, a constant source of complaining, and we just don’t have the money,” said Payne.
Council on Monday approved a motion by Payne requesting that administration prepare a report on how the city could be more “proactive” selling surplus alleys.
“The city would then be relieved, forever, from maintaining them,” said Payne.
It has long been the practice in Windsor to allow abutting property owners to take over their alley portions if there’s no identified need for their continued use. The city usually charges a nominal price of a dollar for the sale of the land, but the residents along the alley must share in the additional costs of an application fee ($1,200) as well as the estimated few thousand dollars for a legal survey of the alley.
The biggest challenge with promoting alley closures is that “we’ve done most of the easy ones,” said Mike Palanacki, the city’s executive director of operations. It becomes a problem when rights-of-way are still required for public utilities (both overhead and below-surface), as well as for access to garages or sheds that open onto the alley, he said.
The city has a street and alley closing committee, and Palanacki said an alley closure is a “tough sell” even when just one or two of the neighbours along a petitioning block argue they need alley access to a garage.
The staff report discussed at this week’s council meeting identified 61 per cent of Windsor’s 150 kilometres of paved alleys (asphalt- and concrete surfaced) as deficient and in need of repair.
Many of the city’s alleys “require total rehabilitation or reconstruction,” said the report, adding the public works department has no program for full alley rehabilitation. The new money — a one-time allocation of $100,000 on top of the previously approved $51,000 — is not intended for that kind of work but rather just for small spot repairs, with locations targeted based on “prioritizing the complaints on file,” according to the report.
“It can’t all be done ... that’s why I’m suggesting a new approach,” said Payne.
Palanacki said Windsor has been closing down alleys for longer than the 30 years he has been with the city. Most of the remainder is hard- surfaced and in the older parts of the city.
Even when alleys are closed, there are other “complexities,” said Palanacki. If an abutting owner refuses to join his neighbour and exercise the right to purchase the abutting portion of the alley, the city remains responsible for maintenance of the remaining spot of public land.
“We don’t have the authority to force anyone to take it over,” he said, adding it’s been a thorny issue during several recent alley transfers.
Not doing spot repairs for the worst locations along those alleys owned by the city puts the municipality at a greater risk of lawsuits, city administrators say.