County to consider future of Ball's Bridge at meeting
By Keith Roulston

Huron County councillors will attempt to come up with a recommendation on the future of Ball’s Bridge at their Oct. 17 committee of the whole meeting.

The decision came after another lengthy debate over the issue at the Oct. 5 meeting of council. Although councillors cannot bind a future council to an expenditure of money this late in their term leading up to the November municipal election, Goderich councillor Deb Shewfelt said it was important for the current council to deal with the issue rather than dump it in the lap of the new council.

Ben Van Diepenbeek, councillor for Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh agreed, noting that if anything is going to be done next summer to repair the historic iron bridge south of Auburn, closed earlier by the county roads department because it was deemed unsafe for use, then planning work needed to go ahead soon.

Central Huron councillor Bert Dykstra, chair of the planning, agriculture and public works committee, said council must decide what standard they would restore the bridge too, whether to take loads of two tonnes or five tonnes or even to just as a walking bridge, then find what it would cost. He urged continuing to move forward.

But other councillors indicated they aren’t in favour of spending any tax dollars on the project.

“It should be repaired with heritage dollars or fund-raised dollars,” said Ken Oke, South Huron councillor.

Oke said he had walked on the bridge and was able to shake the whole bridge with one hand on the handrail.

“If you can repair that for $150,000 and have a car go over it I would eat my shirt,” he challenged.

East Huron councillor Bernie MacLellan said he wasn’t very sympathetic to arguments to save the bridge for heritage reasons. “It’s a piece of transportation equipment that was updated 20 years ago,” he said, recalling the building of a new bridge on County Rd. 15 to the south. “It didn’t seem that the council (of the day) ever thought of spending more money on it,” he said, suggesting councillors were waiting for a natural disaster to take out the bridge.

“I’ll make it known that I don’t think county dollars should be spent on restoring the bridge,” MacLellan said.

But Van Diepenbeek said the county spends money on all boundary bridges (the bridge belongs to the county even though it’s not on a county road because it links Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh with Central Huron). “I can’t say we shouldn’t spend any money on it.”

That comment brought a motion by John Bezaire, councillor for Central Huron, to prepare a study to turn over all boundary bridges to lower tier municipalities.

When Huron East councillor Joe Seili said he couldn’t support downloading the bridges unless the county brought them up to standard, Bezaire said he intended the bridges would be brought up to county standards before transfer.

That prompted Oke to say he couldn’t support bringing Ball’s Bridge up to county standards because is would cost $5-10 million.

Bezaire got things even further off topic when he suggested there should be a one-tier road system because the split jurisdiction adds expense.

His motion for a study on how to divest from all county bridges was defeated and another motion to discuss the future of the bridge at the Oct. 17 meeting was carried.