Stouffer Street construction causes major headaches for residents

'We don’t like Stouffville as much as we used to'

Yorkregion.com
July 19, 2019
Simon Martin

“It has been a nightmare.”

Stouffer Street resident Treina Miller wasn’t about to sugar-coat the experience of the lengthy road reconstruction.

Everybody on Stouffer Street has a different story about the near two-year experience, but Miller’s account paints the most stark picture.

Broken gas lines, broken water lines, a diesel spill, dump trucks knocking over temporary phone and cable lines; you name it and it happened on the street, says Miller. “It was incompetence.”

One of Miller’s main grievances was that her basement foundation cracked during construction. When the road was being torn up, Miller said a backhoe was “pounding the living daylights” out of the road when it was freezing temperatures in January of 2018. The foundation cracked and her entire basement flooded. When Miller contacted the town and an engineer came out and to take a look, she was told the construction wasn’t sufficient to cause damage to the foundation.

“Telling everybody, 'Too bad, so sad,'” she said.

Her family has lived at the home for 45 years.

Fellow Stouffer Street resident Michael Roseman said the whole thing has left a sour taste in his mouth.

“We don’t like Stouffville as much as we used to. This is the last straw,” he said. “The communication has been horrible.”    

Roseman said that, while on vacation, the water shut off on three separate days and when they returned his water softener was constantly cycling.

 “When the next water bill came it was $500 too high,” he said.

When Roseman went into the town for a meeting about the issue, they told him their lawyers had been in touch with him about the issue, which Roseman said was not the case.

“I told them, ‘You know something, I’m tired of this.’”

As construction wraps up, Roseman said the ordeal has been painful.

“The town planning is either non-existent or useless. They don’t really know how much water is flowing underneath Stouffville,” he said.

Carol Kidd has lived in the area for 40 years and is fed up with the experience.

“It’s one of the biggest fiascoes that has ever happened in the town,” she said. “It was terribly disorganized. The worst job I have ever seen.”

When construction crews were trying to break through the asphalt on the road, her whole house was shaking. She said a number of cracks in the foundation occurred and there was flooding in the basement. When she contacted the town, Kidd said the engineer who was sent to look at it said the issue wasn’t caused by the construction.

While there have been many delays with the project, the town said it is tracking on budget and is continually monitored.

The contract was awarded in summer 2017. Town spokesperson Glenn Jackson said work in the winter was necessary because the town was successful in attaining a Clean Water and Wastewater Fund grant of $833,000. A strict requirement of the funding was that the majority of the grant-eligible funds were to be spent by March 31 of the following year, thus requiring work through the winter.

As for complaints from residents about their basement foundations, Jackson said the town takes all reports of damage related to construction activity very seriously. The town retained a third-party specialist to investigate foundation cracking and water infiltration as required. In all investigations to date the consultant concluded that the issues being experienced were unrelated to construction.

Newly elected Ward 5 Coun. Richard Bartley came into office halfway through the construction. He said the majority of the complaints he has heard about the matter have been about the driveway paving. He said he believes the town has responded adequately to those concerns.  

Nearly two years later, the street was finally paved July 15. According to the town, inclement weather and unforeseen scope items resulted in a delay of the project. In addition, productivity was lower working through the winter.