The District of Kent is adding three new sidewalks to its snow clearing plan, after a request from a local resident this past January.
“The bylaw already has language to permit staff … to provide snow removal for sections fronting Highway 9 throughout the townsite, so it makes sense to add this small section of sidewalk,” Mick Thiessen, director of engineering service, said during council Monday (Feb. 25).
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The three Highway 9 sidewalk sections include:
- McDonald Road to Park Street,
- Park Street to Evergreen Drive
- and Cheam Avenue to the CPR Crossing.
Staff decided the sidewalk north of the CPR crossing was the responsibility of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
Including these sections of sidewalk in the snow clearing plan will have a small financial impact, Thiessen said, but it won’t make a major impact on the current snow clearing budget.
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Mayor Sylvia Pranger was quick to note that it will make a large impact for people walking along those roads.
“Those are difficult pieces of sidewalk because the highway gets cleaned and they get piled full again,” she said. “It’s part of a safety issue.”
In addition to including those new sections of sidewalk, council also made some other minor adjustments to the snow clearing bylaw. These included updating the language around vehicle sizes and releasing staff from having to maintain handwritten logs of operations work if the vehicles are equipped with GPS.
grace.kennedy@ahobserver.com
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