NB Mayor looks forward to year of many projects for city

In the meantime, Gillan said the city will continue to maintain upkeep of the Access Communications Centre facility, including making sure it has proper accessible features to accommodate everyone.

Another project Gillan is looking forward to is developing a pavilion, a cultural meeting place, at the top of King Hill. The city wants to celebrate Indigenous culture with the initiative.

“We hope to approve a concept design in 2024,” Gillan said. “We do have quite a bit of donated funding for that luckily. Now we’re working with Elders, groups in the community, and saying what can we build on King Hill that really brings our community together to share our cultures here.”

The mayor noted the organizers will need to look at plans for lighting, parking and other features of the site also.

“We’re going to make progress with that in 2024, before this council is done,” he said.

The city also wants to make upgrades for its two water treatment plants in the year ahead.

The F.E. Holliday Plant draws water from the North Saskatchewan River, while the Water Treatment Plant #1 uses water from the nearby well sites.

“We have to continuously invest in those assets because it’s important to have potable water,” Gillan said. “We’re making a couple major investments this year. For the F.E. Holliday Plant we’re putting in a backup generator there. In the other plant, we’re investing in a brand new water-well this year. These are major investments.”

The back-up generator is budgeted at about $1 million, while for a new water-well the city is looking at a cost of up to around $700,000.

“They are important to continue to supply potable water into the community,” Gillan said. “We’re lucky we have two water treatment plants. We have to continuously protect our water supply.”

Another task the city plans to take on in 2024 is installing two new charging stations for electric vehicles for the city’s fleet, to be more environmentally friendly.

“Even though we don’t have a fleet of electric vehicles right now, there’s a large grant out there [that’s available],” the mayor said.

The city also wants to make improvements to the drainage at Parsons Industrial Park in the year ahead.

“We have a consultant now that is figuring out the best way to rebuild some drainage structure to get [the overland] water to the river,” the mayor said. “We have to be prepared for more severe weather. We want to make sure that our industrial park is serving the existing businesses that are there, but also ready for new businesses because we still have quite a bit of land there. So that’s an important investment.”

Continuing with the Underground Pipe and Asphalt Replacement (UPAR) work is another priority for the city.

“We’re going to be investing about $5.2 m in that program, so it’s not insignificant,” Gillan said. “About $3.6 m of that is going to be water, sewer and road replacement on 110 Street. We’re also just doing surface work. We have some roads in the community where even though the pipes underneath don’t have to be replaced, the surface is getting very bad. We don’t want to have to rebuild the whole road, so we do surface work. About 25 per cent [of that budget] is just going to be improving the top structure of the asphalt on a number of streets.”

The city will also make improvements to sidewalks as part of this work.

“We heard from a lot of people in the community our sidewalks are deteriorating, and we know that,” the mayor said.

The city has a budget of about $300,000 to repair a number of sidewalks.

“We’re doing what we can to rehabilitate existing sidewalks that are in terrible condition,” Gillan added.

A few roads in the city have bumps due to crews not being able to finish asphalt work on these streets previously. The mayor said these roads will also be repaired this year as part of the UPAR work.

“We’ll finish the asphalt so it will be nice and smooth,” he said.

Safety is also top of mind in the city’s plans for the year. The city will be putting in a large crosswalk with flashing lights on 100 Street at 17 Avenue, that will be partly funded with a grant from the province.

“We need to help people get across 100 Street safely,” Gillan said. “The traffic on 100 Street is very fast and there are multiple lanes, so everybody needs to see that there are pedestrians out there.”

The city is also working on finishing renovations at a space in the Don Ross Centre for a new accessible council chambers. The project is expected to be completed sometime in the next month or two.

“We want to make sure the door is always open for anybody, whether they have accessibility issues or not, so they can come in and watch [council meetings] live,” the mayor said. “I’m excited because again it’s community pride.”

During the State of the City Address in April, the mayor will give some highlights of what council has achieved in its term to date, as the city heads towards a municipal election later in November.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

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by Angela Brown

NB Mayor looks forward to year of many projects for city

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