Doing touch ups to painted lines on city streets in the fall could be making a comeback.
According to a staff report to city council, the practice of repainting some lines on major roads in October was called off a decade ago.
This was before federal government regulations changed in 2009 to restrict the type of paint the city can use. The city switched from an oil-based paint to a water-based paint because the new Environment Canada regulations were aimed at reducing smog-creating emissions produced when certain ingredients in the paint are drying.
Under those new rules, city staff "noticed a decrease in paint performance," said the staff report.
"In high traffic areas such as arterial roadways the street markings placed at the beginning of the season are no longer visible in the fall or following season."
Adding a second round of painting in the fall is estimated to cost an extra $30,000 to the existing $231,300 that was budgeted for the work in 2015.
The report to council doesn't include any information on this year's current contract to paint lane markings. With the exception of during the early 2000s, the work has been completed by an outside contractor for decades.
Once the city took it on, crews applied lines using a standard pick up truck equipped with line-painting equipment. In 2007, the city purchased a Linetech painting truck that was used for two years before it was decided that there wasn't enough work within the city for an operator to become proficient enough at the task. The truck was sold in 2009 and the work was again contracted out, though city crews still do the preliminary layout for the contractor to follow.
As previously reported in The Citizen, the city's public works department stepped in for discussions with this year's contractor - R&N Maintenance Western - in mid-June over the work.
