Taxpayers’ money down the drain

A Fort Richmond woman has spent nine years fighting to have a storm drain repaired so that water — and not tax dollars — can go down it.

Suzanne Pothe said every spring when the snow melts, the drain will be backed up, a large section of ice will form on the street, and a city work crew will have to show up to reopen the drain.

Pothe blames a private contractor who resurfaced Greyfriars Road with asphalt in 2015, but didn’t take into account the storm drain in the curb. After the asphalt was put down, and the crew had left, only about one-third of the drain was above the asphalt.

Nine years later, nothing has changed.

“You hope when you have an issue in your constituency that your voice will be heard and not just passed off,” said Pothe on Thursday.

“This has been going on for nine years. I’ve called multiple times through the years. The (crew) did an improper job with the city and I am mystified why the city didn’t get them to fix it years ago.

Pothe, who has taken dozens of photos detailing the problems with the drain, said it started when the city hired a private contractor to resurface the road.

She said when she took her first photo, on Sept. 8, 2015, Greyfriars Road had newly poured pavement, while the drain, which is in the middle of the curved curb towards Lafayette Bay, was still open. But, the new asphalt created a speed bump at Greyfriars.

“It was a large almost six-inch drop to the street,” said Pothe. “They said they would come back and finish it off, which they did two or three weeks later, but when they did, that’s when they basically covered the drain.”

When Pothe called the city about it, she was advised to call the contractor which, unsurprisingly, went nowhere. She called the city back, but nothing happened.

She kept calling every year.

This autumn, as leaves started to block the drain, Pothe said she had enough and decided to post about it on social media and call two city councillors.

Gage Haubrich, the local director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the case is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“It really looks like that, at every opportunity, the city made probably the worst, most expensive decision, it could,” said Haubrich.

“It failed to accurately check out the work of the contractor when the road was done in 2015 and, every year since, instead of fully fixing the problem, they decided to pay for a crew to head out there and unclog it every single time — that’s something that is always going to cost money.”

He said it should be fixed, period: “I’m just flabbergasted on that point.”

Markus Chambers, the councillor for the area, said he took Pothe’s complaint in April, got a 311 reference number, and has spoken to officials in both the city’s public works and water and waste departments. Chambers said he hasn’t received an update.

“It appears the contractor reduced the flow into the catch basin by almost two-thirds,” he said.

“I’m not sure what the process was back in 2015, but in this case the work doesn’t meet with satisfaction. I’ve now taken action when it was identified to me as an issue.”

A City of Winnipeg spokesperson said they are looking into the issue and couldn’t comment.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Kevin Rollason
Reporter

Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press’s city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin.

Every piece of reporting Kevin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

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