Stoney Creek couple furious after city shows up unannounced and tears up part of driveway

Lindzi Armstrong has a bit of an unconventional driveway at her Stoney Creek home.

Or she had one up until earlier this week.

The driveway of her 2nd Street North home runs long from a back shed to a street curb and loops onto a wide chunk of a front yard - almost reaching the neighbour's driveway - while bearing concrete that mimics a city sidewalk.

Our whole community uses it. The six cars around us, everybody uses it," said Armstrong. There's a lot of speeding here, and there's no sidewalk, so a lot of residents walking with their dog or a stroller use the landing as cars go by."

Armstrong said the curious L-shaped driveway came with the house she and her husband, Steve, bought 10 years ago, and that a past owner built it sometime in the late 1970s.

But its existence came to a sudden end Monday.

At around 8 a.m., a city construction crew arrived on the couple's doorstep unannounced with an excavator and tore up the extended concrete parking pad, reducing it to a ditch of dirt and rocks, according to Armstrong.

Armstrong - who sprung out of bed in pyjamas to quickly move her car at the behest of the crew - alleges the city gave absolutely no advance notice" about the construction and has yet to provide a firm explanation as to why it was done.

There was absolutely zero communication regarding the work," Armstrong said in an interview Tuesday. I feel extremely violated. We were absolutely bullied."

At the crux of the couple's frustration is what they consider a shocking" lack of communication on the part of the city.

Last week, Armstrong called the city with questions after she noticed spray paint marks on the road adjacent to the concrete pad.

We asked if something was going on in front of our house, if road work was being planned," she said. They said, Yeah, yeah, we'll let you know, but we don't know when or what will be done.'"

Then on Monday, as a group of construction workers readied up the excavator, Armstrong and her husband approached their supervisor.

We're like, Hey, this is crazy, stop what you're doing,'" she recalled. But he didn't know how to handle it - he was just doing his job - so he called his supervisor and passed us the phone."

That conversation, too, ended with no answers, Armstrong said.

Mike Field, the city's acting director of transportation, operations and maintenance, said in a statement the concrete pad was removed because it was a nonpermitted installation" and crews needed to replace a steel culvert that extends underneath each end of the couple's driveway.

The way (the pad) had been installed interfered with the original stormwater management ditch that ensured proper water flow into the stormwater system," he said.

As for the standard notification process for construction work, Field said the city communicates proactively and utilizes a variety of methods, including phone calls, letters in mailboxes and in-person door knocks to ensure that adequate notice is provided in advance."

Armstrong said she never received a phone call, letter or door knock before Monday.

Ward 5 councillor Chad Collins, meanwhile, said notice is not always required.

For small jobs like that, work in front of the house, it's a knock on the door on the day of," he said. For a large construction project - if it's going to last a couple of days or a week, if there's a road closure - then people get advanced notification."

Collins said the explanation for the driveway ordeal is twofold.

On the one hand, the concrete pad, while on the couple's front yard, sits on what is technically city property - a three- to five-foot stretch between the end of a front yard and the curb of a road or sidewalk.

That's why Bell or Rogers can put a cable under the end of a front yard, because it's city property," he said. This is all infrastructure that is owned and maintained by the city. The (couple) moved into a house with an asset that was installed without any permission."

On the other hand, Collins claimed the couple asked the city to remove the pad and replace the culvert last year, when a neighbour's home had theirs replaced.

My understanding is when staff visited last year to replace the adjacent neighbour's culvert, (they) asked for theirs to be replaced and also the pad to be removed," he said. These are scheduled a year in advance and they were put on the wait list."

Armstrong vehemently denies this.

At no point did we ever, ever, ever ask to remove this important portion of property from our home," she said. Why would we ever do that? And why would we forget about it?"

She also questioned why, if the pad is on city property, it was never removed or noticed in the past when crews came to work in the area.

As far I'm concerned, the city just took a chunk of my property value away with no plans to replace it," she said.

Sebastian Bron is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sbron@thespec.com