Growing pothole problems bring out the punditry on Mayor's own Facebook Portal

Potholes and crumbling roads are making for conversation for city residents

As Rupertites bounce along the many, many troubled roads in the community, some of them are taking their message for road remediation deep into the Mayor's Social media stream.

With a number of his readership recently hijacking a theme on the Mayor's Facebook page, a place where normally only the most positive of topics make for the content.

Try as he did, Mayor Brain had attempted to call attention to some meetings that he held in Prince George related to the Resource Benefits Alliance of the Northwest, that during a week long journey to the Central Interior.

However, as he might have discovered, for the most part the only information that those weighing in on wanted to hear about, was some indication that relief to the  dire straits of the civic road infrastructure may be on the way.

The issue of the city's roads actually made it to the Council Chamber at the end of January as part of the Council session of the 27th.

As we noted at the time, City Councillor Nick Adey raised the topic, somewhat to the bemusement it seemed to the rest of council and staff on hand for the night, the Councillor noting how people in town were somewhat passionate about the topic.

"People take the issue quite seriously and rightly so ... I'm hoping that there is a plan to moving forward with some of the more egregious potholes that we are aware of and I'm interested  in whether ... which one's get done first  is a function of which ones are more serious and if that's built into the plan" -- Councillor Nick Adey in January on the growing concerns related to Prince Rupert's roads

At the session, City Manager Robert Long, used the recent cycle of thaw and frost to point the finger of blame towards the issue; though if Councillors are looking to explore the issue further, they probably would discover that many of the city's road issues pre date the stretch of nasty weather of December/January.

As we observed in our notes of the Council session, despite a reported 1 million dollar roads program approved by Council in 2019, for most areas of the city, the roads are still in somewhat the same shape that they have been for a number of years now.

And if the Mayor's Facebook page is any indication some of those that travel along them are getting restless.

Council members might want to take heed of some of the commentary from the social media feed and provide the city's residents currently navigating the slalom events that make for the city's roads with a bit more of a comprehensive answer as to how the roads ended up this way and what kind of plan the city has to address the concerns.

For more notes on civic infrastructure see our archive page here.

A wider overview of past City Council themes can be explored from our Council Discussion page