This space was used earlier this year to suggest that Estevan's streets and avenues needed to be swept more often during the spring and summer months. This is required because of the types of industries we cater to in the region.
While snow removal in the winter appears to be handled quite efficiently, the street and sidewalk cleaning efforts in the summer are less than impressive.
Now it has become evident that our main thoroughfares don't really require cleaning as much as complete replacement.
One only has to travel to other like-sized communities to reach the conclusion that the Energy City has, arguably, the best hockey arena available to the sporting public and probably the worst roads.
Before we raise the blood pressure levels though, we remind readers that the current administration in City Hall has been diligently moving forward, attempting to make up for lost time and attention from previous regimes who felt, at various times in our history, that the community would be better served by not imposing property tax increases even when faced with a rapidly depleting infrastructure.
Mitigation dollars were spent on a variety of things, including the backfilling of public works budgets instead of bolstering them when the work evidently needed to be done.
At the time, status quo was the operative word, which was fine for those who didn't want, or feel there was a need to pay more in property taxes or utility fees.
It worked for awhile.
But now the catch up projects need to be done and can't be done since this city currently engaged in an era of rapid expansion that includes the development of new subdivisions, new industrial sectors and their accompanying infrastructures that include pavement, curbs, sidewalks, sewer and water lines plus lighting. This is leaving the hard pressed public works and leisure services teams with no time, or precious little time, to spend on the city's core areas, the older sections of the city where revitalization is sorely needed. Unfortunately, it appears as if these areas will have to be neglected for another few years due to lack of funds, time and personnel.
Yes, the streets we still have require cleaning and we realize they won't be cleaned any time soon. But it's obvious 90 per cent of them need to be replaced due to rapid deterioration and that can't be done without a fresh resolve and fresh financing.
We have built a gem of a sporting facility that has been added to a gem of an existing sport and cultural centre. Our only problem now is actually getting to these facilities through a maze of ravaged, weed infested sidewalks and boulevards and broken streets that are skimpily illuminated at night.
Progress comes with a price and we're learning right about now what that price is and it's not that pretty.
It seems we went with discount service providers for too many years and we got what we paid for, which wasn't much.
We'll keep encouraging growth and population increases, but we will keep calling out for attention to be paid to the areas of our city that have been there for decades and require rejuvenation so that all citizens can enjoy the new economic vibrations.
