It doesn’t come as a surprise to Mayor Steve Black that more residents who have cottages on rural roads are looking for winter maintenance. City council green lighted snow plowing on two back roads in an August meeting, and now another cottager has a similar request.
Black says this time, it’s for a tax rebate on Kenogamissi Lake, as opposed to the winter maintenance. He says the residents have taken a bit of a different approach, because it’s a long road without a lot of tax payers on it. So, he says they are looking for some sort of rebate to offset some of those costs. That would be instead of the city taking it over, updating it, and then snow plowing it on a regular basis. Black says the resident was following the city’s decision to maintain rural, private roads. Once the city agreed to plow Charland and Bertrand, this cottager followed suit.
Black says he’s not surprised this has come up, and doesn’t expect it to be the last of its kind. He says that’s one of the reasons why he thought the city should follow their current policy. That policy states a road has to be upgraded to the minimum standard by the taxpayer. Once that is done, the city would take it over and maintain it, if council gives the go-ahead.
The Kenogamissi Lake request still has to be debated at city hall.
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