See, I said they would tip toe around it...and do something, maybe, once fall came around, and the paving was done for the season.
Those......er....ah...."people", used loosly, who run our city are so predicatable...
I am so happy I was not one of the many who voted them in....
Oh isn't it just about time for our "wonderful" mayor to take another holiday at our expense???

Gofaster,

I want it on record that i voted for just ONE of the council and not the mayor.
The only sitting council member i voted for is a fellow I know from community futures as well, so i knew he really tries hard to do a great job.

And the last person i would ever vote for is a certain loud mouth, overweight guy, who thinks he is god.... but in reality is more like gum on a hot sidewalk.....just waiting to stick to your shoes, so you need to be careful to avoid it.

I was very careful to not use any names , so as to not piss anyone off.....see how politically correct i can be? ***WINK***

The fall??? Gee whiz! City council sure must have a big "in-basket".

Let's be realistic people. This has high priority and some of the things can be done fairly quickly while others can't. I like to be fair, and realize the city does not move quickly on many things, but let us look at one or two of these just as an example.

1. Debris and other matter on roads and bicycle lanes

This should be an easy one. Send a street sweeper out and clean the area. Make sure to use water to wet down the dust. :-) Then monitor it and re-sweep whenever it gets dirty again. At the same time, observe whether this is different than the rest of the city and is as a result of local truck traffic hauling gravel or whatever. If so, charge the company for the extra cleaning and reuire them to cover the open box. ;-)

2. The existence of best practices for gravel and asphalt operations and their use or potential use at the industrial sites under discussion

This is tougher. Must request a tour of each plant to get operating procedures and observe them as well. Ask their opinion about best practices. Then locate authorities on what is best practices, since this is not something that anyone at City Hall would likely know, although if they are allowing such operations they ought to know. Even if they did, the info might be a few years old so would have to be rechecked. With this one they are relying on the availability of people, especially given the summer, and it might take a couple of weeks just to get the information. That then needs to be compared to existing local practices and, if substantially different one should speak to the local operators to see what the hurdles are to change the practices. Depending on the expense or impact on operations to the extent that product may not be able to be delivered in time as promised, an evaluation has to take place on one action versus another action. A report written to cover all that. My estimate is that to do this properly is about 80 to 100 person hours ... which in consultant dollar figures is about $12,000 to $15,000 for an engineering report.

Of course, you could choose to do a half-ass job and do it in 10 person hours.

The good news is that while doing such work one would really be dealing with most of the other points.

And, in the end, one still does not know the pollution levels since that is not one of the points identified. It just states to monitor noise, it does not sate to monitor the pollutants reaching the residents. In fact, it does not even state to monitor noise which reaches the residents.

That is one of the problems which a Council or a Board of Director risks when they make decisions based on no input by staff. That is why, when gorups make presentations to Council, they are well advised to specifically list what it is they want.

This was an expedient decision. Council should have asked Admin to act on obvious immediate matters and then come back with what should be in a more comprehensive report and to consult with the presenters on that. Also, ready by next council meeting due to the urgency.

Another delay, but it would more likely have caught the gaps.

As far as Council having a big in-basket ... it is staff that have that. Everytime Council asks for something it sets an entire bureaucracy in motion and adds "stuff" to everyone's workload. When there is a fire like this in one place, other thngs get neglected. There is a finite amount of person-power.

If it cannot be done internally, then it gets sent out to consultants, which sets up a whole different set of problems. Most consultants also have tons of work, especially at this time of year. They can't just drop other clients and deal with the City. They can't just staff up for a particular project either.

BTW .... why is this happening?

One theory is that operators such as asphalt and gravel operators are living in a competitive world. They need to cut their operations costs to the bone, especially with the rise of energy costs. So, they try to comply with the standards that are out there to the best of their ability but they do not dwell on it untill there are complaints. Even then, they will avoid making changes that stick.

So, that then amounts to more monitoring by those who should be doingthat, but aren't because they have no staff to do extensive monitoring. Much of this work is done on the "honours" system.

So, one way or another we end up paying for it wither with our health, safety or dollars.

That is the bigger picture view of this which no one is talking about. The "leaky condo" problem is a good example of that. The $5 million that had to be spent to replace the facade of the jail just recently is another good example of that. And, of course, the entire fiasco with the Cameron Street Bridge is another.

;-)

Well written Owl !

I tried in another thread to simply ay that they are operating a business, and try to do so is not as easy as some people think.
I am self employed, and get tired of hearing how easy I have it, since i am my own boss.
I have to get a lic. pass inspections, comply with a pile of rules etc. etc.
The paving companies were sold a bussiness lic from the city, and are being charged taxes etc. they pay staff and offer a needed product....yet people want to bitch that they exist.
To the whiners....move the hell out to some farm 100 kms from the nearest business then and stop complaining.

My 2 cents

You are absolutely right Owl, up to the whiner part. my 2 cents.
I am not blaming the companies totally, or the city either, though it may seem like it....
there are a lot of contributing factors that have created a problem....
do I have a solution....maybe over the long haul...immediate one....nope....

Governments (at all levels) do move like glaciers. Unless you owe them money. Then we see how fast the system works. If I owed the city money, I am sure they wouldn't wait "til the fall" for it. Oh, well.

I bet if one of the city council or worse yet the mayor had this problem that thing would happen a lot sooner than this fall....at least I think that to be true

I also agree with what Owl has put forth, but please lets not have any of our Councillors pretend to be "experts" in this area and be involved in touring a site to come up with an "experts" opinion.

Exactly what I was waiting for! Councillor Brian Skaken should be announcing his presence for all to see, shortly.
Or maybe he already did, and the media are sick of him looking for the spotlight. Brain seems to love jumping in front of whatever and wherever the light is shining.