Wellington County council has approved revised financing plans for a new county public works garage in Mapleton and authorized staff to move ahead with the project as originally designed.
Consideration had been given to options to reduce costs, including building a smaller shop, an internal redesign or deferring the project after cost projections in June came in at more than $3 million over the original $4 million estimate.
At the June 13 Wellington County council meeting, councillor Gary Williamson, chair of the roads committee, said the committee recommended continuing the project with the original design and following the original tender schedule. However it was made clear during the tendering process the lowest or any tender may not be accepted and, depending on tenders, the county may elect to re-tender in the spring.
In August two submissions were received for construction management of the project, which was awarded to TRP Construction of Burlington with a guaranteed maximum price for the construction cost related to phase two coming in at $4,145,000.
Additional funding
Additional funding for the project was found through a development charge study update completed in 2017 which identified eligible growth related capital funding for Drayton. To help ease budget pressures staff recommended issuing development charge-funded debt to the maximum amount eligible ($3.45 million), reducing the necessary draw from the Roads Capital Reserve and future levy requirements to fund debt servicing costs on the project.
At the Oct. 26 meeting, Williamson told county councillors the eligibility of the project for development-charge related funding “is something we didn’t know about at the time because we were just working on it.”
The revised funding plan, Williamson noted, means “the overrun makes no direct impact on the 2017 budget or on the tax base.”
The project, which includes an 20,016 square foot, 11-bay garage is now budgeted at $7.2 million. Phase one includes the decommissioning of the existing site and the land purchase and related legal fees for a total of $270,000. Phase two is the building construction phase, estimated at $6,000,000. Phase three is works to be completed in 2018, which includes the purchase and installation of a new sand dome and the paving of the parking lot at a cost of $850,000.
Williams said lessons learned from the unexpected overage will be applied to future projects.
“It should be noted also that the estimates for future road garage will reflect the circumstances that we realized on this project so that we will have a lot more accurate numbers beforehand,” he told council.
