Dear Editor:
I have been wondering for years how the City of Burnaby's engineering and planning department works. What I have noticed in North Burnaby is that there is a lot of money wasted.
For example, two or three years ago, Broadway was completely re-paved between Holdom and Duthie avenues. Last fall, the city dug a trench from Holdom to Duthie to replace the storm drain or sewer piping lengthwise along Broadway.
The City of Burnaby would have already known when they re-paved Broadway that this infrastructure had to be replaced. Now, we are left with a terrible patch job that jars your teeth running from Holdom to Duthie.
I live on Hycrest Drive, and the City of Burnaby replaced the water mains three years ago. The water main was switched from the north side of the street to the south side of the street with unacceptable patch jobs done on the street in front of every house.
If you complain to the City of Burnaby, you are told that it is not in the budget to properly repair or repave the street. Our block still has the original pavement that was done in 1970. The street still has gravel at the sides of the road, ditches and no lighting, along with the badly repaired street.
We have drug deals going on in the laneway to the north of Hycrest Drive as well as on the Ãcole Sperling Elementary grounds at night (to which the RCMP will not respond unless you go out and get a licence plate number), car break-ins, car thefts, stolen cars abandoned and house break-ins.
The laneway to the north side of Hycrest Drive that runs parallel to the Sperling school is gravel. The city will come out and spend two or three days every year grading and dumping new gravel instead of paving.
During the spring, summer and fall months I have to keep my windows closed because of all of the dirt and dust flying every time a car drives down that lane.
Lastly, there is the laneway that runs between the south side of Hycrest Drive and the north side of Broadway.
It was also paved in 1970, and the only prep work done was to run a grader down in to grind it down to dirt and pave directly onto that. This lane has split and sunk from the middle to the north side.
My father complained about it three years before he died in 2009, and I have complained about it as well.
If we have snow, I have to deal with the cars sliding into the ditch from my driveway to the end of my property.
Guess what I am told by the City of Burnaby? "It's not in the budget."
Why am I paying inflated property taxes and utility taxes if the City of Burnaby is wasting tax dollars doing projects in reverse order and ignoring maintenance requests?
Is anybody else frustrated or am I standing alone?
Doug Morissette, Burnaby
