In a recent post, I discussed how I was threatened with a $10-14k bill from the roads department at City hall regarding damage to the alley behind my project.  While I could accept a minority of the blame here, based on bad judgement of my contractor driving down a soggy alley at a time they should have been more careful, the City over reaction is so typical of how it operates.

For example, the majority of heavy traffic in an alley is the City owned garage and recycling trucks, plus lighter traffic from residents. The alley was susceptible to rutting because the gas company has to dig a couple huge holes in the middle of it to expose the gas lines.  

I had some heavy equipment in the alley, but this was when the street was solid with frost, so no damage was done (hauling out waste bins, etc).  I won't have any more traffic in the alley until we put the garage in from here on - we have very few deliveries left that can't be from the front.

While the City cost to operate is so bizarrely inflated, it gives insight into how it functions.  The City runs an operation with little regard to cost or value.  It is a very blunt instrument.  It seems like it will take any possible avenue to bill (exploit) as much as possible in an arbitrary way if they can find someone to blame, and bill.  The best way to avoid this is to stay as far from any dealing with the City as possible.  If the City would spend $14k to fix ruts in an alley (needing, graders, loaders, material, labourers, signage, street closures, managers, an engineering bill, etc), you wonder how much other routine City business must cost.  No sane person would think fixing a few ruts in the spring time in an alley could cost that much.

One factor here is how crazy it is to blame someone for damage, but then not allow them to fix it.  It is against the bylaw to operate on City property.  The alley is a City owned property, so only specially certified contractors are allowed to work on it.  So on the one hand the City is saying you need to fix the alley, yet at the same time the alley is not allowed to be fixed.  

At this point we went ahead and fixed the alley despite concern that fixing it could be worse somehow.  Maybe the City would come back and say the wrong type of crushed material was used and it needs removed (we used 25 mm road crush as we were told).  Or the City will decide to come and fix it anyway, even though it is already dealt with.  

A lot of this issue was created by the neighbours who like to complain about everything.  If the complaints cease now that the alley is fixed, it is unlikely anyone from the City will make further trouble.  Let's hope this is the end of the issue and we can move on with our work on the inside of the house.