“Doing road work, like Farnham Road or Chelford Crescent and Rollins Drive right to new subdivisions that builders are ready just waiting to hook up the services. Waiting for the ministry to give us that approval.”
“We’re the only ones in the region that have all of it. It’s not unusual that some of the bigger municipalities have these powers, but certainly would be in our region. This also opens up the door down the road that we may be able to help some of those other municipalities by reviewing their documents as well, if we have time.”
The mayor also indicated, “It’s more about just fast tracking development in our region. The challenge we have right now is there are people who want to be here. They want to build and we’re waiting.”
“And it’s not the city of Belleville slowing things down it’s other agencies. Whether it be CP and CN, with respect to rail crossings or whether it’s the ministry of environment on getting us environmental compliance approvals.”
Panciuk explained to Quinte News, “This year we’ve put aside $10 million for the Farnham Road reconstruction and we’ve been waiting and waiting for the province to give us its approval. It means in the past we wouldn’t have had to wait. We could have had all the review work done and when it was put out for tender we could issue the contract. When you look at inflation, some of our projects are a million dollars more this year than they were last year, just because of the delay. And so if we can speed that up, it saves us millions of dollars but also allows us to start those projects sooner so that residents can benefit and they can enjoy the better roads and better services.”
