All councillors present except for one voted in favour of a resolution to approve paying additional costs to Nelson River Construction for 2019 road and multi-use path paving at council’s Oct. 28 meeting.
The lone vote against was Coun. Duncan Wong, who said that he hadn’t seen an invoice for the work prior to the meeting.
A memo from city development services director Harkamaljeet Gill said that when tendered values for road paving, multi-use path construction and milling work came in under the budgeted amount for the 2019 capital program, council asked city administration to identify additional paving work to be completed within the budgeted amount. The 2019 financial plan allocated $1.553,805 towards these projects and the amount awarded to Nelson River Construction after the tendering process was $1,359,792. The total cost of completing the project came in at $1,598,733, $227,413.30 more than the amount approved and $44,928.01 over the allocated budget. The additional costs were due to a large soft spot under the new section of multi-use path along Burntwood Road, which required extra excavation and base material to ward off the path sinking in the future, as well as unanticipated soft spots identified on Selkirk Drive, which resulted in additional milling costs. Because the multi-use path crosses the highway intersection at Thompson Drive South and Mystery Lake Roaad, a new crosswalk, curb cuts and para-ramps had to be installed.
Money to cover the $44,928.01 budget overrun came from the federal gas tax fund.
Wong said he would have liked to have known about the cost overrun ahead of the voting about whether to approve the extra money.
“We are giving direction to do the job within the budget,” he said. “If anything above the budget, which, it happens, of course, I’d like to see that, bring it back to the committee which is the proper committee to discuss about it, whether we should go forward. I’m not trying to throw anybody under the bus. I believe the process is very important in this organization. We must be informed.”
Coun. Jeff Fountain agreed that is is important to stick to budgets and not exceed them, or to go through the proper procedure when a project goes over budget.
“We’re about to embark on a $20 million project [a new pool] that some of us have some concerns about and some of the arguments against the cheaper project were that there would be a cost attached and I think this is an example where even a new build has additional costs attached,” Fountain said. “I will be supporting but at the same time I urge that we, with our even more limited budget, be careful as we move forward spending money.”
Mayor Collen Smook said that if council had waited until it knew the exact dollar figure of the originally approved projects, the construction company wouldn’t have been around any longer to complete the additional work..
“Basically, this is part of the things that we run into trouble in the north,” she said. “We do end up with extra costs. Our rain in August, I’m sure, didn’t help us with any of our costs either. With that said I do understand it’s important to be very open and accountable and I believe that’s what we’re doing with this.”
Deputy mayor Kathy Valentino said the development review committee received updates on the project every two weeks and that updates were provided at the mayor’s weekly Monday morning meetings.
“There has been nothing but transparency to council about these projects and how they were going,” she said.
