LAC LA BICHE - A "piss-poor" job.
The words hung in the air of Lac La Biche County's council chambers for a moment, surprising some who heard them in the open public meeting.
Lac La Biche County Mayor Paul Reutov chose the words, he said, over other "stronger comments" he could have used to describe issues with the ongoing downtown construction project the community is paying $32.5 million to complete.
"On this Main Street project, we've had years of planning and millions of dollars spent on engineering and design, and honestly what we've seen so far in Phase 1 is just piss-poor engineering and design," Reutov said during a recent meeting between Lac La Biche County councillors, their municipal planners and representatives of the contracted design team.
The mayor's words came on the heels of what was already a heated discussion during an update on the project that is replacing aging underground utility pipes and upgrading surface features of Lac La Biche's Main Street. The construction that is billed as a rejuvenation for five blocks of Main Street, began in 2020 and is slated to run until the end of 2025. The current phase of the project began at the end of April and marks a little over 50 per cent of the project's scope. Councillors made it clear at the recent meeting they hope the second half of the project goes better than the first.
Beauty?
Although the mult-million dollar municipal project has been called a beautification project, councillors who approved the big-budget spend say they aren't seeing much beauty so far.
Last summer's work that closed off a portion of Main Street from the Highway 36 to the Scotiabank intersection, from May to November was promoted to the public with design drawings of decorative benches and planters, new streetlights and traffic lights — but none of those things have yet to materialize, says councillor Lorin Tkachuk.
"All of the decorative art pieces, the lighting, the lit bollards — all of these things that are supposed to be going in to make Main Street look the way it's supposed to — that beautification portion? It hasn't been done," said Tkachuk, directing his concerns to Lac La Biche County's associate Manager of Engineering Services Ali Memon and Deborah Kaleikini-Johnson, a new project manager working for V3, the company that has been creating the new urban design plan with the municipality since 2017.
Not only was Tkachuk and other members of council concerned about absent items from the design plans, there are also add-ons that council has been surprised by. The most visible are the large, black power boxes dotted along the sidewalks.
"Nowhere in any of our drawings that I recall did I see large power distribution boxes. I assumed they were underground," said Tkachuk, calling them eye-sores that look like someone left "bar fridges" on the sidewalk. "It looks terrible."
Councillor Sterling Jonnson also had concerns, saying some of the work in the area from last year's construction still looks unfinished. He said wiring and conduit piping can be seen sticking out of surface features.
"I'm kind of concerned.... i look at the (flower) beds and the bulb-outs and I see large conduit in there... duct-banks of four or five pipes in there, and I never expected to see duct-work hidden inside a shrub bed. None of that was ever discussed," he said, calling the work hap-hazard. "It seems like the electrical contract was missed and was added on later. It shows poor workmanship."
The councillor also questioned the actual construction process in some areas, noting that standing water or water flowing from the new road towards business frontages indicates what could be a big engineering flaw.
"You see water running across the sidewalk,....this is brand new construction — and we are seeing running water on top of our sidewalks?..... That is not acceptable," he said, highlighting an area near the Lac La Biche Liquor Stop where water runs off the new road and up onto the new sidewalk.
Kaleikini-Johnson said it was the best that engineers could do in some areas based on the existing elevations. She said the roadwork was only to replace old pipes in their existing trenches, which meant, she said, that elevations couldn't be altered.
"All we are doing is replacing the sanitary and everything in the ground, we can't lower and still have the coverage over all those pipes ... you can only lower the road so far. They've lowered it as much as they can."
Councillor Johnson wasn't convinced.
"You had the opportunity to change the grades on this whole street. You could have raised them a foot you 'cudda dropped them two feet," he said.
V3's project manager said that once problem areas came to light, some modifications were made.
"Now we are playing with the curbs in some areas," Kaleikini-Johnson said, adding that grates will be added to some places along sidewalks to get water to the gutters.
The mayor remained unconvinced, saying that elevations and grades were completely in the hands of the engineers, designers and construction crews.
"We started off with a clean slate. There's no excuses for grading, no excuses for heights of sidewalks. I see it in numerous buildings and corners where the grade goes back to building or it's flat in the best case scenario... there are no excuses for it."
The mayor also expressed his frustration over the unsightly black power boxes and the unfinished work.
"When so much detail went into things like designing speakers and the choices of lighting under benches and the street-lighting and all that, then only to put freezers on the sidewalks every 200 feet. Where is this coming from?"
Facing the barrage of concerns, Memon and Kaleikini-Johnson were told by council that it wasn't just elected officials who were had questions. Councillor Tkachuk said the project is the number one topic of community members.
"We get pressure all the time. We can't go to post office, we can't' go to the grocery store, we can't go to Smiley's because we are gong to get grilled for it.... We need to have the answers and definitive answers of exactly when the end product is going to be delivered. And when it is delivered, that it is perfect — not like 'close' but perfect," Tkachuk said.
Let there be light(s)
Memon told councillors that many aspects of the project — from last year and going forward — are continuing to move ahead.
He said new traffic lights at 103 Street will be back in place by the end of April and they will be in operation by the first week of May. He said new streetlights will be installed throughout the project area by the end of May. Upgrades to existing landscaping features will begin by the May long weekend, he said.
Going forward, Memon said there will be discussions with V3 and other contractors about the above-ground power boxes "to find a better solution." Options for the existing ones, however, are limited, he said, since removing them would cause damage and disruption.
He also explained that he too was not aware that the boxes would be part of the plan.
"Were those black boxes part of the tender document - I honestly don't know," he said, explaining that over the years of planning the project, information from previous administrators who are no longer with the municipality, may have been lost. "They might have mentioned, or might have not. I don't know."
What he does know, however, is that things will improve.
"I am leaving the meeting with a promise that you will see a change," he said.
"I second that," said Kaleikini-Johnson. "I will make sure that we cover everything."
Mayor Reutov stressed that the work needs to be done without additional costs.
"I think the time and money has been spent. We want the finished project that people expect - and were promised," he said. It's really important that we deliver a product we are promising. We've spent so much time and money on this, and we need the product that people are going to appreciate."
