Exeter roundabout out of this year's budget again, despite legal implications

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

As part of the same meeting in which the 2026 budget was finally passed after a long and painstaking process, Huron County Council again considered the future of a roundabout at the intersection of County Road 83 and Airport Line just west of Exeter. The project council directed staff to remove from this year’s budget in an effort to save money, despite the fact that no dollars were committed to the roundabout in 2026, was still very much on the minds of some councillors.

 

Director of Public Works Imran Khalid filed a report on the impacts of deferring or cancelling the roundabout project, including potential legal implications, and council discussed it at its March 18 meeting.

 

In terms of raw data, Khalid presented some collision statistics on the heavily-travelled intersection, saying there were 16 total collisions there from 2017 to 2021 and 10 from 2021 to 2025. Six of the collisions from 2017 to 2021 resulted in injuries, while just two caused injuries from 2021 to 2025. Khalid did note, however, that the 2021 and 2022 statistics are likely slightly skewed as a result of lower traffic volume due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

 

“The available data indicates that most collisions continue to involve turning movements, angle collisions or drivers failing to stop or yield at the stop-controlled approaches,” Khalid said in his report, adding, “Further to note is the presence of serious injury collisions in both analysis periods, which is generally a good indication that current measures are not sufficient.”

 

He noted that both staff and the design engineers engaged from B.M. Ross and Associates continued to feel that a roundabout was still the best way to reduce the severity of collisions at the intersection and to further improve safety.

 

Khalid also informed councillors, in his report, that there could be legal implications for the county if the roundabout is deferred until 2027 or cancelled outright.

 

“The county’s legal counsel reviewed potential liability implications related to either deferring the roundabout project to 2027 or cancelling the project and installing a four-way stop or maintaining the existing intersection. The roundabout project originated from a history of collisions at the intersection and subsequent engineering studies that evaluated four potential options. The engineering review did not recommend a four-way stop and identified the roundabout as the preferred solution. Council subsequently accepted this recommendation and the county proceeded with land acquisition, engineering design and project budgeting for construction,” Khalid said in his report. 

 

“Legal counsel advised that once a municipality has identified a safety concern and approved a specific improvement to address it, there may be liability exposure if the municipality later chooses not to proceed. If the project were cancelled or significantly delayed and a serious collision occurred, the county could face potential negligence claims on the basis that it was aware of the hazard and had already identified a reasonable improvement. Of the options considered, deferring the project by one year presents less legal risk than cancelling the project entirely, although some level of risk would remain in either scenario.”
Khalid further noted that, legally, the county may receive a request to sell the property that had been purchased in relation to the roundabout back to the previous owners.

 

He also noted other concerns with utilities and permits, scheduling and other work, noting that, while staff had presented a number of major impacts in the report, there may be further, smaller impacts that staff have yet to uncover down the road.
After this report was presented, councillors rehashed many of their concerns and much of the discussion from earlier deliberations. South Huron Mayor George Finch fought passionately for the roundabout, citing potential legal liability and safety concerns, saying that Airport Line is one of the busiest roads in the county, often casually referred to as Highway 4A, as a convenient alternative to the highly-travelled Highway 4.

 

Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh Mayor and Past-Warden Glen McNeil said this intersection “haunts” him and that, given the new information provided and the legal concerns, he felt that council should reconsider its decision from earlier in the budget process and proceed with the roundabout.

 

However, on the other side of the argument were several councillors who said that the intersection is not dangerous due to its engineering, as a 90-degree angle intersection on flat ground with good visibility, adding that there are similar intersections that are considered dangerous throughout the county and, if every one needed to be rectified with a roundabout that costs over $3 million every time, the county would put itself into the poor house, as Central Huron Mayor Jim Ginn put it.

 

Huron East Mayor Bernie MacLellan noted two recent collisions - one between a school bus and a tractor trailer - at Hydro Line and County Road 12, while others highlighted the often-cited intersection of Base Line and Londesborough Road as other high-profile intersections that have been described as problematic. Furthermore, Goderich Mayor Trevor Bazinet suggested that this roundabout could set a precedent along the lines of what the other councillors were saying, in which the county will be expected to install a roundabout at any intersection that sees a handful of collisions every year.

 

What followed was a complicated process of procedural matters in regards to how the matter could be up for a vote again after being taken out of the year’s budget at council’s Feb. 18 meeting. McNeil asked staff about making a motion to reconsider the issue to get the ball rolling. 

 

Clerk Susan Cronin said that making a motion of reconsideration would be inappropriate, as there is a timeline to a reconsideration motion that dictates that it must come in the same meeting as the original decision. 

 

She then said that if council wanted to deal with the issue that day, it could either vote to rescind the motion, which would need to be done in the form of a notice of motion, meaning it would be put forward at the March 18 meeting, but then discussed and voted on at a future meeting, or council could vote to suspend the rules so it could be handled that day. Either motion would require a two-thirds majority, so 10 of the 15 councillors, in order to pass.

 

Council eventually arrived at making a motion to suspend the rules for this particular vote, made by MacLellan and seconded by McNeil. The vote passed by a simple majority of 8-7, but failed to reach the necessary two-thirds threshold and failed. Warden Jamie Heffer and Councillors Doug Harding, Jim Dietrich, Glen McNeil, Paul Heffer, John Becker, Bernie MacLellan and George Finch voted in favour of the motion, while Councillors Paul Klopp, Trevor Bazinet, Leah Noel, Bill Vanstone, Alvin McLellan, Marg Anderson and Jim Ginn voted against it.