More attention needed to fight 'infrastructure war'

The city's operations committee is getting the ball rolling when it comes to serious infrastructure change. The committee proposed a working strategic session with city council to discuss an infrastructure priority plan.

That means councillors will have a set time to discuss innovative ideas on how to deal with Greater Sudbury's aging and damaged infrastructure.

Sudbury facing infrastructure with 'an end of life'

The asset management plan that council passed in December mentions a need to revamp Sudbury's infrastructure processes, according to the committee chair, Coun. Robert Kirwan. And so far, he says, nothing's been done about it.

"If you look at our capital budget, we're not looking at doing anything different for the next five years the same amount of money, the same allocation and division," Kirwan said.

"We are facing infrastructure that does have an end of life. It will not last forever and we do not have the funds to keep up. Every year, we keep falling further behind."

To shake things up, Kirwan suggested putting money originally allocated to repairing residential streets into repairing major roadways like Notre Dame Avenue or streets in outlying areas that are seeing more traffic after amalgamation.

Though some residents might not be happy to see their roads left out of repairs for a while, Kirwan says it's better than keeping with the status quo.

"We have to reduce our standards in this one area to refocus our strength in [another] area instead of doing the same things over and over again," he says. "If you just went across the system and took care of the major arteries, that's a change in strategy and a change in plan."

Who's fighting the infrastructure war?

One frustration expressed in the committee meeting was a lack of time. Multiple councillors commented that committees read infrastructure reports, but have no time to discuss strategies.

This ineffective cycle needs to end, Kirwan said.

"It's very nice to say we're planning and we know what our gap is, but at the end of the day, what are we actually doing to fight this war? It's an infrastructure war," he says.

No 'magic button' to fix infrastructure deficit

Council has made some efforts to fight this war, according to Tony Cecutti, Sudbury's infrastructure general manager. But without enough funding from the city and the province, nothing permanent will happen.

"Council's been bold and you've increased taxes to attribute towards infrastructure problems," Cecutti said.

"I wish I could say there's a magic button we're going to bring back and fix the problem overnight, but that's not realistic," he added, "the reality is the amount of money you need to be sustainable is significantly different from the money that's available."

The idea of an infrastructure priority planis set to be discussed at city council next week.