Commuters driving on St Thomas Street spent months trying to dodge and maneuver around craters in one of the city's busiest streets, but, tonight, it's like rolling on a glass surface - a near perfect pavement. After months, CitCo, along with funding from the utility companies, has finally repaved the street with hot mix. It still has some residual bumps here and there but nothing like before. And after all the complaints, mediation, and stress, Councillor Allan Pollard says he's relieved.
Allan Pollard, Deputy Mayor
"Actually elated, relief is the proper word at this point. As you said, there were a lot of people who were upset at the time, just challenge, whether it's going to work, whether it's taking their kids to school and traversing this area, we know it's a busy area and we were excited for the start and now to be here and seeing it completed, very refreshing for us and I'm pretty much relived and I could bet the residents are as well."
Courtney Menzies:
"Were you a little worried in the middle because they finished that side and then the tropical storm came in the middle of that?"
Allan Pollard, Deputy Mayor
"Yes, these things happen in construction, any contractor can tell you, this are some of the things you have to look out for. In our case at the city it's kind of different because we have a lot of people depending on the completion of the projects, we have businesses, we have residents, and of course we have school kids who are using the area too so we have to keep all of that in mind and of course be mindful of all the natural things that can go wrong."
Courtney Menzies:
"The last we interviewed the mayor about this street he mentioned that it was BWS that, he kinda threw them under the bus, saying they ripped it apart without his permission but wasn't it on your say so?"
Allan Pollard, Deputy Mayor
"Well, the thing is, I have dual role here so I'm both the deputy mayor and councillor responsible for infrastructure and also I sit on the board of directors for BWS so our main thing was, we started the stoplight, the intersection there, and we concreted the stoplight intersection in house and we did some upgrades there so that communication was easy for us so at the time we told them that we wanted to continue the rest of St Thomas and the guys, BWS quickly jumped on it and that's the kind of proactive, I don't see it as a bad thing, I think it's a proactive measure that they took and something that we want to see more often happen. If you notice sometimes there are some streets that are concreted already and paved already and BWS have to go back and actually break up the new street so in this case it happened exactly the way we wanted it to happen."
"I think what really messed up the process was the timeline in between and of course that is due to the mediation and negotiations in between."
Courtney Menzies:
"I think in this process though you shouldered a lot of blame so now that it's completed do you feel vindicated in any way?"
Allan Pollard, Deputy Mayor
"Of course, at the end of the day, my position, I am no contractor, I am no engineer anything like that, I am simply a politician that works for the people and for me, getting St Thomas Street done, getting Cemetery Road done, those were big projects before the municipal election that we wanted to do. We promised these things before the election and our job is to get it done."
And Pollard reminds drivers that while it's smooth, it's not a freeway, so unless you want to deal with endless speed bumps, you'll have to slow down.
