The owners of six Coquitlam properties will split a bill with the city to pave part of a laneway behind their homes.
On Monday (March 28), council gave first, second and third readings for the work north of Walls Avenue and south of Rochester.
Under the local area service bylaw, Coquitlam homeowners pay 60 per cent of the construction costs and the municipality pays the balance.
That means each property owner is on the hook for about $2,500, for a total of $15,000 from the residents.
They will have the choice of either making a lump sum payment or be charged an annual taxation levy over 15 years, wrote Jaime Boan, Coquitlam’s general manager of engineering and public works, in a report to council.
The city will contribute $10,000 toward the local improvement project.
Council unanimously OK’d the plan — without comment — at its latest public meeting (Coun. Dennis Marsden was not present).
And should fourth and final bylaw reading be approved on Monday (April 4), Boan added, construction on the lane is due to start this year.
The move comes in response to a complaint last year about a small part of the lane south of 928 Rochester Ave.
In a petition launched by the municipality to propose the Local Area Service work, five out of six owners voted in favour; at least half of the owners must approve the upgrades before proceeding.
In past years, the cost split for Local Area Service updates was as high as 90 per cent for property owners, and 10 per cent for the city.
About 91 per cent of Coquitlam’s lanes are paved, most of them finished as part of development servicing in the 1990s.
The remaining nine per cent of the unpaved lanes are in southwestern Coquitlam “and many of these will be upgraded over time, as part of development,” Boan wrote in his report.
