Concerns about the safety of Cranbrook Hill Road -also known as Cranbrook Hole Road - are not new.
The steep, winding road has been a perpetual problem for the City of Prince George to maintain. Cranbrook Hill Road serves the Cranbrook Hill neighbourhood and popular Forests for the World park.
According to city administrators, the road serves approximately 1,000 vehicles per day, plus cyclists, joggers and other users.
Repaving the bottom half of the road had been scheduled for this year, but money was reallocated by city council earlier this year to fund repaving of several main arterial roads.
There is no doubt the combination of steepness and gravely base pose extreme, technical challenges for road maintenance. However, Cranbrook Hill Road is also the victim of the triage the city has been forced into because of underfunding of its core infrastructure.
According to the city's own calculations, it's annual road budget of $3.57 million is half of what is needed to do the job.
So what options does city council have?
1) Ignore the problem and leave it for the next council to deal with.
This is the strategy which previous councils have used for at least a decade, with some success. However, as the roads continue to degrade, voter dissatisfaction is growing.
2) Wish for the money fairy to leave a couple million dollars under the city's pillow.
Municipalities with a lot more clout than Prince George have been asking senior governments to chip in for infrastructure for years with little success.
Other than the federal fuel tax rebates to municipalities, the majority of federal and provincial funding programs are for one-time improvements.
MPs and MLAs like projects with big signs that say, "Look, the Harper/Clark government funded this." There is no photo opp to be had filling potholes and repaving residential streets.
3) Alternative tax styles.
While more promising that No. 2, number three is still a longer shot than running against Usain Bolt.
Alternative forms of taxation, such as a fuel tax, would require legislative changes to enact. Any such change is likely to be slow - the result of years of lobbying by multiple municipalities.
Prince George simply cannot rely on this approach to yield results in time to save the city's crumbling infrastructure.
4) Cut other services to fund roads.
This is the approach the current council seems to be on with its core service review plan.
Finding $3.5 million in the city's $131 million budget - about 2.7 per cent - will be difficult.
Protection services - police and the fire department - comprise approximately 32 per cent of the city's total spending. Add in debt repayment, which is not optional, and what is already spent on road maintenance and operations, and 59 per cent of the budget is already spoken for.
Parks and recreation services, and general city governance costs, round out the bulk of the remaining budget.
The city's parks maintenance budget has already taken a hit, and our parks show it. Closing or reducing hours at recreation facilities like the Prince George Aquatic Centre or arenas will likely cause a strong backlash from user groups.
5) Put it on credit.
The city can choose to borrow money for capital projects like road repaving. However, like a household putting groceries on the credit card, borrowing for regular expenses is a downward spiral that leads to bankruptcy.
Several municipalities in California have declared bankruptcy, and it's not a rout that Prince George wants to go.
6) Tax and spend.
In 2012 the city raised $80.17 million in property taxes. Adding $3.5 million for additional road work to that would be a 4.36 per cent tax increase.
Had that increase been factored into the 2012 property tax assessments, the residential property tax rate for this year would have been $8.13529 per $1,000 assessed value instead of $7.79541 per $1,000 value.
For a home worth $200,000, that would have meant $1,627 in city property taxes this year instead of $1,559 - an extra $68.
For most $34 per $100,000 of home value would be a small price to pay for safe, well-maintained roads.
-- Associate news editor Arthur Williams
