Street sweepers are coming, Mattawa, but they won’t be around long.
This year, the municipality has decided to contract the work of sweeping Mattawa’s streets out to Deep Construction. It is expected that the Deep Construction crew will complete the work within a week or two, with the bristles hitting the ground in the first week of May.
“It’s not that our guys don’t know how to sweep,” said Mayor Raymond Bélanger, “but it does take three months to do with the equipment they have.”
That’s right, the average time for Public Works to completely remove the sand from the streets is about three months. Why so long? The equipment is not well-suited for a speedy job, the Director of Community Service, Dexture Sarrazin informed council, and “the Elgin Sweeper has seen better days and will limp through the work” required this summer.
The other machine – an MT5 Trackless with broom implement – doesn’t have a vacuum, so all the sand must be picked up by a loader, which does a number on the pavement.
Not only that, but the crew often gets called away from sweeping to fix another problem in town. With this work contracted out “other work that needs to be completed will now take priority.”
But what of the cost? Deep Construction will do the work for $31,200 plus taxes. Keep in mind the cost for staff to do the work averages about $46,000 per year, Sarrazin detailed. Plus, if Public Works can do some sweeping on its own, each kilometer the crew clears will be deducted from the quote.
Weather permitting, the sand will be removed from the roads by mid-May, so expect a little dust in the meantime.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
