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Council gets bumpy ride over town’s potholed streets

What gives with the roads of Rimbey? Our little pink town is looking kind of rough and unkempt these days.

Dear Editor:

What gives with the roads of Rimbey? Our little pink town is looking kind of rough and unkempt these days. There are huge potholes and water traps all over the place. To make matters worse they are being filled with gravel and rocks at our expense. I am no road tech, but it would seem to me that pouring gravel in a pothole only serves as a temporary fix that is both costly and dangerous.

I say costly due to the extra labour involved when it comes time to actually repair the hole. Someone’s got to empty it, and clean up the 10 or so yards of gravel put there by two men, one truck and one backhoe (Or is it town counsel’s stand that pouring a yard of gravel into a pothole is the way a pothole is permanently repaired?). I say costly due to rocks on the road being thrown through widows from cars peeling out and into windshields from cars just driving down the road.

I say dangerous because as a motorcyclist I take my life in my hands every time I ride into this town. Gravel is the motorcyclist’s worst enemy. Just try to make a quick emergency stop on a 900-lb. bike on gravel or try to navigate a turn without your world being turned upside down.

The other day I was in the car wash and this young man from out of town pulled in to inspect the damage to his low profile car after he hit a hidden pothole under a puddle. He had just about tore the rear bumper cover completely from his car and figured: “about $2,000 damage not including paint.”

We pay our taxes, boy do we pay our taxes; so Town of Rimbey, I ask where’s the money going? Certainly not into infrastructure that counts, like the main streets of Rimbey. The problems lay further than the Beatty House corner. What about the Co-op entrance? How about the intersection at the BMO? How about we go further down and talk about the intersection at Integra Tire or all the intersections along the north side of Main Street Rimbey all the way to Buist. Isn’t it time the townsfolk of Rimbey get their money’s worth from this town that lately seems to take but not give?

It’s too bad we have become so complacent that we as a community continue to shell out hard earned money for little or no service just because were told we have to. I guess I’m a tad jealous as a business owner in the service industry. I wish I could charge something for nothing too. But as our French neighbours say c’est la vie.

Mark Steeves