In a turnaround, the City of Trois-Rivières, in Mauricie, finally decided to provide access to all the stairs during the winter and to maintain them.
The City had received numerous criticisms of 10 staircases being closed due to snow.
Most of these stairs were in the Carmel district. Two municipal councilors had even taken the situation in hand during the weekend, and had cleared the steps of three staircases with the help of two citizens. The chairman of the sustainable mobility committee, Pierre Montreuil, and the vice-chairman, René Martin, wanted to make the premises safe.
It is that citizens had removed the barriers which blocked the road to circulate all the same. The impacts are great on residents of the area, as well as on the students who use them every day to get to school.
“Closing stairs, we must not forget, it prevents a worker from going to his workplace on foot. It prevents a student from going to his educational institution. It prevents an elderly person from maintaining their physical shape, ”argued the Carmel district councilor, Mr. Montreuil.
The decision to close the stairs was made pending the official decision. With the costs for snow removal operations which have exploded, the City had to review its operations to rebalance the budget, explained the spokesperson for the City of Trois-Rivières, Mikaël Morrissette.
“As soon as the first shovel hits the stairs, you have to honor the snow removal contract until the end of winter. This is why we had temporarily blocked access to it to be able to give ourselves the time necessary for the official decision to be taken, ”he added.
The Carrefours district councilor, René Martin, added that it was a package of circumstances that led to the situation. “I understood that it’s not the official’s fault, it’s really that during our last budget meeting, we again asked to give an eighth turn of the screw to cut somewhere, and the storm arrived” , he explained.
Moreover, the committee on sustainable mobility will present its recommendations on the subject on Tuesday. Now, we will have to see where else the city will have to cut to recover these 50,000 dollars due to snow removal. An obligation, like “a municipal government cannot be in deficit”, assured Mr. Montreuil.
The signs and barriers have been removed, the stairs have been cleared of snow and should be so for the rest of the winter.