Relief coming in 2021, says local city councillor Nicholas Borne
Growing impatience over an unpaved and unimproved section of a residential street in the city’s Laval-Les Îles district is spurring one local home-owner to complain she’s not receiving adequate service for the annual property taxes she doles out.
Separated by barrier
The lower portion of Patrick St., where it intersects Bord de l’Eau Rd., hasn’t recently been improved and the surface is only partly paved. In contrast, a continuation of Patrick St. – beyond a barrier separating the two segments – is fully paved and seems to be up to snuff.
While the paved and improved section of Patrick St. also appears to be in a more recently developed area with houses built 10-15 years ago, the portion near Bord de l’Eau seems to date from a time decades ago when Patrick street came to a dead end where the barrier is now.
Still unimproved
“Our road’s never been paved, there are huge potholes that have never been filled, there are no street lights,” said Jane Ghanem who bought a property and has lived on the street’s unimproved section for the past four years.
‘Our road’s never been paved, there are huge potholes that have never been filled, there are no street lights’
She says that simply driving onto Bord de l’Eau is challenging and dangerous because of inadequate traffic signage and traffic calming measures at the intersection.
“I could hit pedestrians and bicyclists and cars,” she continued. “And I’ve told them [the city] several times that no one can see right or left from there, but they never fix it.”
Bad snow removal
She also complained that trash and recycling removal crews frequently forget to make pickups on her street, while ice and snow removal workers don’t remember to lay down sand and salt on the road surface during the winter.
“I have videos of how icy the street is in the winter. No one every comes and puts salt. The way they do the snow, they block my driveway. Because it’s a dead end, they don’t use the proper machines to come and pick up the snow.”
Ghanem said that before buying and building on her property, she contacted the city to find out how improvements might be made to their section of Patrick St. “They said fifty per cent of the street has to agree to finish your street,” she said, adding that she and another resident did the legwork, completed the forms and sent it all to the city for processing.
Same tax, not same service
“In 2018, they told us, yeah, it’s ready to go. But now we’re going into 2021 and they’re telling us Laval has many projects already like this. But I’ve driven around Sainte-Dorothée and I haven’t seen any other streets quite like this.”
Ghanem said that even though her property is considered to be part of the new development and she is paying taxes based on those being charged there, she and the other property owners on her section of Patrick St. aren’t receiving the same level of service.
“I’ve paid a lot of money to live here,” she said. “And yet I can’t even finish my driveway because the street’s not paved. It’s four years I’ve been here now and it’s really frustrating.” The Laval News reached out to the city councillor for Laval-Les Îles, Nicholas Borne, for his response and feedback.
Help on the way, says Borne
“In my sector, certain streets are still under study for the addition of services,” he acknowledged in an e-mail. “Among these are Laflamme St., which is also not paved, or the southern portion of Patrick St.”
Regarding Patrick St., Borne said Jane Ghanem had been told several times that a project for her street was under study by the City of Laval’s engineering department. He said that what also needs to be understood is that for this type of work, a tax has to be taken into consideration for the addition of services to the whole sector. “It has been confirmed to us that a project will be presented to a few residents of the sector during the first trimester of 2021 in the course of a public consultation,” said Borne. “This project should facilitate connecting the rest of Patrick street.”
