A County of Wellington presentation on “runaway soft costs” for municipal construction projects was “well received” by provincial officials and the county is awaiting word on its offer to host a roundtable discussion on the issue.
The presentation to a ministry delegation headed by MPP Peter Milczyn, parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure, was made at the 2016 OGRA/ROMA (Ontario Good Roads Association/Rural Ontario Municipal Association) Combined Conference in February.
“The presentation led by councillor Gary Williamson, chair of the county’s roads committee, seemed to have been very well received,” stated county engineer Gordon Ough in a report at the April 28 county council meeting.
In the report, county officials detailed concerns with rising costs for municipal infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, “particularly the soft costs associated with approvals, regulations and requirements.”
The report provides examples of issues “that create inefficiencies in our efforts to provide sustainable infrastructure in a cost-effective way.” It states the examples indicate, “there is a real need to review the processes that are creating the runaway soft costs.”
Much of the presentation’s focus was on requirements needed to satisfy six conservation authorities with jurisdiction in various parts of the county.
“Even though CAs have the same mandate from the province (created in 1946 by an Act of the Provincial Legislature), there are no consistencies between CAs with respect to their approval process, what they consider wetland, and approvals related to in-water works and fisheries,” the report states.
The report indicates it routinely takes up to a year to obtain conservation authority approval for a project. This past year the county replaced a culvert in the Credit Valley Conservation area which took three years to secure approval.
The report contends CVC continually changed its requirements, resulting in the engineers making multiple submissions and design changes, including one that “wasted valuable time and money … and we found out that it was a staff directive, not an actual requirement for approval.”
At the outset of the design process with CVC the county indicated it only had $500,000 budgeted for the project, yet total project costs were $723,000 with $204,000 of that for engineering.
The report explained the impact of Species at Risk (SAR) regulations on the Hillsburgh Dam, Pond and Bridge environmenal assessment (EA) in the Town of Erin. The project commenced in February to collect the required filed data for the Natural Heritage and ended in October of the same year. Species from white tail deer, salamander, snakes, turtles, butterflies, birds, bats, fishes, mussels, reptiles, etc., were all identified.
In total, 32 “Species with Conservation Status”, noted as “Special Concern” to “Threatened to Endangered,” were identified. In this case at least a year and half will be needed to complete the background and the fieldwork and report. With additional work expected to be needed, fees to date are in excess of $60,000.
In another case, a private landowner is completing work to improve a municipal drain that runs across a property was told by the natural resources ministry’s SAR department that a six-metre span concrete box culvert was required for turtle passage.
Councillor Doug Breen stated he was “really happy” with the report and its “great examples. Hopefully someone at Queens Park will notice and do something about it.”
Warden George Bridge echoed Breen’s comments, citing one project that “should have cost two or three hundred thousand dollars was a million … We just can’t keep going down that path.”
Councillor Chris White said municipal officials must continue to monitor costs to prevent the situation from escalating. “As they try and deal with the thousand-year storm there’s going to be more soft costs so we have to be vigilant.”
The report also targets the Municipal Class EA process, which involves municipalities spending “a significant amount of money” on engineering far in advance of a project being constructed. The report notes it can take more than four years to get final approvals from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change depending on the complexity of a project.
The presentation in February included an offer from the county to host a “fact finding meeting” with ministry and municipal staff, conservation authorities, OGRA, the Municipal Engineers Association and Consulting Engineers of Ontario to identify issues and “come up with a possible solution.”
Williamson said the pro-active approach made the ministry more amenable to considering the county’s concerns.
“I think it was really well received and I think the biggest reason is we didn’t just go in and complain, we actually offered a solution,” he stated.
