Sudbury boosts road repair budget by $22M

Greater Sudbury city council votes Tuesday on reallocating $22 million in found savings to three road projects, including Azilda's MR35 and Notre Dame.

In 2025, Greater Sudbury approved the 2026 capital budget that included $140.1 million for road construction.

Eleven out of 14 road projects have been identified and completed, while the remaining three go to city council tonight (March 10).

Ward 4 Coun. Pauline Fortin said $10 million in work planned for 8.2 kilometres of MR35 in Azilda is particularly exciting news for her. It’s part of an additional approximately $22 million in roads money funded from surplus roads projects budgets from completed projects as well as projects being reprioritized and rescoped within the city. The staff report recommends returning $1.87 million of the surplus to the Capital Financing Reserve Fund.

Fortin said the extra road repairs is good news for everyone in the city.

“I was so excited just to see, you know, roads that are on there, like Burton (Avenue), which was on CAA’s worst road list,” she said.

“These are streets that I get calls about all the time. So I couldn’t hold back my enthusiasm in seeing this coming.”

Reserve funds

Work is being done from Big Nickel Mine Road to Notre Dame Street in Azilda, as well as two spreader contracts for laid asphalt patches.

Fortin said the city found the money in reserves for these projects. She credits new CAO Shari Lichterman for finding the surplus funds.

“We have a brand new CAO and we now have a CFO, which we haven’t had for a very long time,” she said.

“We have new general managers and they’re taking a good, hard look at everything ... We did projects and we came in under budget. So some of that money is being rolled back in and staff did a great job at finding these savings to put it back into infrastructure and get more roads done.”

Fortin said repairs to MR35 are badly needed.

“I take that road pretty much every day and so do many residents in Sudbury, and it’s so exciting to hear that it’s going to get fixed. I mean, there are a lot of potholes. It’s bad.”

“I hope there’ll be more of this to come. We have the right team at the city now and we’re seeing positive, positive things happening and it is exciting.”