BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication).
*************************
Last March, Andrea Miller, the city's general manager of infrastructure and growth management, toured Gloria Street and others declaring them in pretty rough shape.
Owing to the asbestos fibres being abraded from the nearly 50-year-old asbestos-asphalt streets, operations had Elgin street sweepers make 14 rounds through our neighbourhood in 2020.
Next was an effort by city staff to identify as many asbestos-asphalt streets as possible. The result was the document ‘City of Barrie-Asbestos in Pavement'. While far from complete, Gloria is absent from the list because it was not bore holed.
A repaving project of Gloria and Oren Boulevard in 2018 was stopped as the pavement contained asbestos. According to you, city websites and Karen Cooper, a protocol exists to remove and dispose of asbestos-asphalt pavement.
The 2021 Barrie budget featured a list of streets to be repaved. Not a single asbestos-asphalt street is included in the repaving projects through 2023. This period even covers and extends past the municipal election scheduled for next year. Pity the politicians.
Our Riverwood Farms community was built in 1972. The neighbourhood has contributed $58 million in taxes since then. Adding the other Barrie asbestos-asphalt neighbourhoods, the money homeowners have presented to the city is staggering. Ridding Barrie of the decrepit asbestos-asphalt streets leaking dangerous asbestos fibres into the environment is a matter of health and safety.
Beg, borrow or steal but please get it done and soon... very soon.
Dieter Mueller
Barrie
*************************
