The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The City of Flin Flon is reminding motorists to obey traffic barricades put in place to protect municipal workers. The City has issued a news release condemning this practice as "both dangerous to the workers and also illegal." The release states that workers putting up the Christmas tree outside City Hall last week had a particularly difficult time with drivers disregarding the detour signs. During a period of just over 10 minutes while the tree was going up, the license plate numbers were taken down of 15 vehicles that ignored the barricades. "Charges are expected to be brought by the RCMP against these motorists," states the release. This is the second time in 15 months that the City has issued a statement on this problem. In Sept. 2002, the City and the Canadian Union of Public Employees stated that "from time to time, dangerous near-miss situations involving motorists driving past barricades have unfortunately occurred. "For the sake of the safety of City workers and passing motorists alike, where work sites have not been completely blocked off to the public, motorists are requested to proceed slowly, and to conduct their vehicles as far as possible to the opposite side of the roadway from the City workers, as circumstances may permit. All detour signs must be respected." City Solicitor Mark Kolt, who presented last year's press release to The Reminder, said in a previous interview that drivers who disobey the detours may affect the job the workers are able to do. "They're there to do a job, and it's difficult to do that job if they're always looking over their shoulders at vehicles that aren't supposed to be there," he said.
