RM of Rosedale Readies Itself for Spring Road Work

At the Rural Municipality of Rosedale’s March meeting, Councillors heard from Lane McQuarrie, a resident of the Rosedale Municipality of McCreary whose land is bordered by Rosedale Crown Land. He was concerned about some illegal cutting along the undeveloped road allowance between the two pieces of land, which continues onto his private property. He believes that Council had been misled about the purpose of someone wanting to develop that area. According to McQuarrie, the only thing that development would accomplish was to grant access to his land for elk hunting.

He was joined by a conservation officer who clarified some points about permissions that would be needed if Rosedale wanted to continue to develop the road allowance, including a logging permit, and the need for a survey to be done to establish land boundaries. Councillors had already put a halt to work taking place on that location when they first received notice in January, and expressed no interest in continuing to cut a new trail through that area.

Council received a report from the Valley Life Housing Corp, which is an organization that has formed to create supportive, age-appropriate housing to ensure that community elders can age-in-place and not be forced to take residence in larger centres to receive the care they need. The not-for-profit is a partnership between five rural municipalities, including Rosedale. Council resolved to do a survey of their constituents to determine what their needs are in terms of senior housing and other related supports.

Bids were received for a new overhead door needed at the Public Works shop, a concern for over the past few weeks. While normally Council would be concerned primarily with cost, in this case shipping time was a huge consideration as well. Ultimately Council accepted a bid that was not the lowest, but was the one that they could be confident in and that would arrive with necessary haste.

The Public Works department gave an in-person report to Council regarding their activities over the past month, which largely consisted of snow removal, breakdowns, equipment repairs, and the aforementioned overhead door repair. Some Council members had received inquiries from residents about a delay in road clearing, and asked that the CAO and Council be kept informed about breakdowns as well as repair projects that tie up public works staff so that they could convey that to residents.

Gravel tenders for all the unpaved roads within the municipality were received and distributed to Council members. These are quoted and selected ward by ward rather than for the municipality as a whole, and so companies can tender for just one ward or all of them at their discretion. As Rosedale elects its Councillors on the ward system as well, each was able to make their own selection of which tender to accept for their own ward, however in all cases the lowest quote was accepted.

The municipality was able to find only one clay source to repair some of its flood sites and so there was only one quote for Council to consider for the work. Disaster Financial Assistance will be reimbursing the cost of the repair so Council was able to proceed with the quote they received.

Council also received tenders for engineering services to repair flood sites #10 and #20. These are the two most complicated sites, and require engineering to repair properly even if some of the physical work can be done by public works. Council was hopeful that the work would be completed by summer. This is another project that Disaster Financial Assistance will be reimbursing once the work is completed.

Also covered were the fire protection agreement, staff and contractor matters, annual scholarships, a water assessment study, new equipment purchases, and further road issues.