Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader

Slave Lake’s town council had so much fun bugging the provincial government about area highways last year, they’ve decided to do it again in 2021!

Or to put it a bit more accurately, a campaign of letter-writing, pothole photo-sharing and such seemed to produce results. So if it worked in 2020, the reasoning goes, why not this year? After all, the problems – notwithstanding the 14 kilometres of paving promised for this year – are still prevalent and if anything worse after another winter of freezing, thawing and pounding. Highway 88 in spots is in terrible shape, and no resurfacing has been scheduled.

Last week the town launched its 2021 ‘Fix Our Highways’ letter campaign.

“We need everyone within the community to raise their voices,” says the message on slavelake.com……”to let them know we won’t stand for it.”

The town is making it easier for citizens to take part by providing a letter, plus “an extensive library of photos of our damaged highways.” Sign the letter (or write your own), attach some photos and send it off to the minister. While you’re at it, send copies to the premier and an MLA or two.

Mayor Tyler Warman tells The Leader he’s been told a couple of factors go into the province’s decisions about where to spend money on roads: one is what the maintenance contractor tells them; the other is ‘customer feedback.’

“We want to make sure they are getting some customer feedback!” he says.