Hall Road residents want a better road

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Improving the condition of the Hall Road through Windermere may be an invitation to speeders who already use the “back road” to Greenwood, but residents are more concerned with the holes, bumps and patchy paving.

“We know there is a problem with speeding - we though about that, but that’s the police’s problem,” says Dwight Sawler, who spearheaded a recent petition calling for road work.

“People were like, ‘Oh my God - it’s about time’ when I asked them to sign.”

The community figures it’s been at least 18 years since the road was resurfaced, and that was just a chip seal.

“Right in front of our place, our neighbour lost his mailbox three times this winter - people hit it. It’s probably been eight times in the past five years.

“The snowplows can’t scrape right down because it’s too uneven, about three months ago a lady fell - rolled her ankle in a pothole - and then she fell into the middle of the road, a friend blew a tire in a pothole and we do front-end alignments a couple of times a year.”

Sawler said he called the Department of Transportation six years ago looking for work on the road and was told it was number one on the list.

“Well, I’d hate to be number two at this rate!” Sawler says. “Last year, they patched about a half-kilometre in from the Aylesford Road end, and then stopped.”

Sawler gathered 120 names on his petition at hall events and from community residents. It calls for repaving or resurfacing in some way the three kilometre length of road. he took the petition to Kings West MLA Leo Glavine.

“It will go nowhere this year, “Glavine acknowledges, “but I did enter it in the spring legislature, and I gave a copy to the minister.”

Glavine says he’ll work this summer with the Department of Transportation’s deputy minister and Valley area staff to meet with residents and think about options that could be included in next year’s roads budget.

“We’ll see how they view it: whether it is a repaving - or reconstruction - job. It’s a case where it does need some work.”