Between gravel and a hard place

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This article was published 02/09/2011 (5393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some Winnipeg homeowners stuck paying thousands to pave their own gravel lanes are exasperated by a Tory pledge to spend $40 million doing the job for others.

“That actually (peeves) me right off,” said St. Vital resident Greg Rudolph. “Why should I have to pay when others are getting it for free?”

Rudolph, along with his neighbours on Sunset Boulevard, are splitting a $360,000 bill to pave their rutted, muddy gravel lane with concrete. Work is slated to start this fall.

It will cost Rudolph $7,000 in local improvement levies added to his property taxes. That’s if he pays it all at once. The cost will double if he stretches it over 20 years and adds interest.

Rudolph, along with neighbour Neil Selluski, opposed the local improvement levy but there were enough people on the block willing to pony up that the city approved it.

Earlier this week, Conservative Leader Hugh McFadyen promised to create a $40-million fund to pave all of Winnipeg’s 380 gravel back lanes — a pledge designed to woo voters in key battleground ridings and tackle the city’s infrastructure problem.

Selluski said the fund is a sure-fire vote-getter in his household, but it might come too late for Sunset Boulevard.

“That would be a little salt in the wound,” said Selluski, who joked the $14,000 he’ll pay for his lane over the next two decades would make a tidy tuition fund for his newborn baby.

Gravel lanes date back to before Unicity. Last year, the city repaved about five stretches of gravel lanes using local improvement fees. Many homeowners on roadways such as Guay and Handyside avenues in Glenwood will likely still be paying for their new back lanes for years.

Asked about the unfairness of a two-tiered back-lane funding scheme, Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen said the city must decide itself how to administer the $40-million fund.

“We want to be fair about it, certainly. But we want to get the work done as well,” said McFadyen. “That’s one of the administrative issues and fairness issues that we’ll work out with the city.”

North Kildonan Coun. Jeff Browaty, a Conservative, says he expects there will be some relief available for homeowners who have just begun paying for paving with local improvement fees.

Browaty is among a group of Winnipeg city councillors — most of them Tories — who have raised the issue of gravel back lanes repeatedly in recent years.

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Last year, St. James-Brooklands Coun. Scott Fielding and St. Charles Coun. Grant Nordman lobbied for an extra $1 million to stabilize a batch of particularly bad gravel roads.

Except for St. Vital, where 21 per cent of back lanes are gravel, most areas of the city with a high number of gravel lanes aren’t necessarily areas the Tories are desperate to win votes.

Fielding’s St. James ward is the scene of a real battle between the Tory and NDP candidates but just eight per cent of Fielding’s ward has gravel lanes.

The ward with the highest percentage of back lanes is St. Boniface at 29 per cent. Much of that ward forms the provincial riding of St. Boniface, solidly represented by Premier Greg Selinger.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca