As the story of the safety issues on Gatensbury Rd continues to unfold, first introduced by me here in this post, we are heartened to see that we are still making news, although no longer on the front page. 

I want to personally take a moment to thank Tri-City News reporter, Sarah Payne for her excellent coverage and willingness to keep following this story with and for us.

And this excellent editorial, which was published on Dec 1st, also in the TCN, is another example of the kind of support that the community is showing for the problems we are facing.

It’s a bit ironic that it took such a small thing, the failure to deliver our mail because of one postal worker’s safety concerns, to bring such a large  issue back to light again.  But it was the hook that caught the community’s imagination; kind of like the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

This issue first came before City Council in 2007, and was brought up again by Lori Holdenried in 2010 and both times previous, it was noted and forgotten. *(see note below)

As noted in the article pictured above, this past Tuesday, Dec 8th, a delegation of about 10 residents including Lori, myself and others both youngsters and oldsters, appeared at City Council’s monthly and last meeting of 2015 to further appeal our case for addressing the issue of safety on our section of roadway.

After our presentation, all 6 councillors and Mayor Clay had extensive questions and comments for us.  As councillor Diana Dillworth noted, our concern is valid, but without a political will to address it, it WILL be passed over again or not fully addressed.  The political reality is this; any of the solutions we are considering will cost money, a fairly substantial amount, and that means if they assign the money to our problem, it has to come from somewhere.  That somewhere is other projects that money has been budgeted and allocated to.  So there needs to be some thought and negotiation as to how to actually proceed.

We appreciate that fact.  We also know that it will not be solved overnight.  What is most important is that the safety issues of Gatensbury Rd. don’t fall off the radar screen again and fade into nothingness.  We all feel that there is a serious tragedy that is just waiting to happen and we’d like to take the ounce of prevention here instead of having to respond with a pound of cure, because such an event occurs.

To this end, we were quite pleased with 2 positive outcomes from our appearance before the Mayor and City Council:

1. That council unanimously passed a motion to have traffic safety on our street added to the Traffic Safety Committee’s 2016 work plan
2. That Mark Halpin, transportation planner- engineering division, met with us in the hall after the meeting to assure us that he will personally bring our concerns forward in future TSC meetings.

As they say, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” and as I personally assured the Mayor and Council, we will continue to keep squeaking!!

Thanks for listening.  Please share if you’d like to help with our squeaking 🙂

Rich

* Lori just corrected me and sent me a wonderful pdf “Moody Centre Neighborhood Traffic Study: Final Report, 2007.  I’ll be sharing some of the report’s studies and conclusions in future blogs. If you’d like a copy of it, just contact me via comments and I’ll email it to you.