SNOWDOWN - Daycare children and students heading back to school have not been as safe as one would like.
Speeding and ignoring stop signs are a daily occurrence in spite of the new speed humps and other traffic calming measures designed to slow down traffic in the school corridor, according to a resident who spoke at the borough council meeting on Sept. 3.
By now police radar operations should have improved the situation in the sector.
However, with two daycare centres on Snowdon and a school at the corner of Coolbrook and Queen-Mary, kids and parents in the area face problems every day.
Drivers too often don’t bother to heed the red lights and bad habits are hard to lose. The resident reported that some drivers racing off to work barely slow down through the intersection.
“The parents here are all really mad. If we want to retain families in the city, could we start thinking about how create a safer environment, both from traffic and graffiti?” asked Louise Blanchard.
She said that graffiti is a big problem for parents of young children in the neighbourhood. Luckily her house behind the hedge has been spared, but not the garage, and the tags always come back. It’s pretty distressing to see graffiti all over, even on the church,” she said.
The Coolbrook/Snowdon resident thinks that maybe the borough can come up with some kind of revitalization project through interesting and creative ideas like in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where community organizations are upgrading neglected or run-down places and are happy with the results.
But Marvin Rotrand responded that adopting new tools for the city requires more diverse sources of revenue. You can’t cut an existing service to provide another. “For years now, we’ve been taking too much of that revenue from property taxes. People can’t pay any more than that. They’re paying their share in property taxes and school taxes, and it’s a lot,” he said.
Toronto had to fight a long battle to obtain some concessions from the Ontario government, he says, and now we need the same thing in Montreal. And for that, relations need to change between Montreal and Quebec. The government needs to understand what Montreal is about. It’s the métropole, but it’s being treated like the Saguenay,” he laughed.
Rotrand is hopeful that the city can come up with some solutions through reorganization, finding money that can be used to solve problems. A police radar operation helped on Earnscliffe, and for now the same can be done at Snowdon and Coolbrook to get the message through, he said.
Residents can also get involved as volunteers with the many community organizations that partner with the borough to deliver a wide range of services, from sports and recreation to social activities and street security, like the eco-quartiers and Prevention NDG, said the Snowdon councillor.
