Wellington County staff will handle a planned roads garage facility study in-house, after the roads committee turned down a recommendation to initiate a study utilizing outside contractors.
The committee defeated a resolution to implement the study on April 10.
The proposal called for the study to be funded with about $104,000 remaining from a $125,0000 budget for preliminary design work on a new Erin/Brucedale shop.
The current 10-year capital budget and forecast lists four proposed garage project locations – Arthur, Erin, Brucedale and Harriston – to be designed and constructed between 2019 to 2027.
A current development charges background study included seven shop rebuild/expansion projects at a total cost of $28 million.
Staff proposed in a report that the county undertake a study that would provide guidelines for staff and council to make future garage facility decisions and provide additional information for future development charges background studies and future capital budgets and forecasts.
“We reviewed this report. The majority of the committee want to take a different approach,” said roads committee chair councillor Gary Williamson at the April 26 county council meeting.
“As we’ve said many times around this horseshoe, we believe we have the best staff in the province and the committee thought it would be wise of us to take advantage of the expertise that our staff has and to do this study and to move forward in-house, also knowing that we have to bring in some outside consultants to help to do building design and site preparation, that type of thing.”
The staff report notes the Arthur garage project, currently slated for design work in 2019 and construction in 2021, is the most pressing.
Councillor Andy Lennox, mayor of Wellington North, asked if the county has the available staff time to do the study in-house, given the original proposal was to contract it out.
“We believe that there is. We don’t foresee there being that much staff time actually involved,” replied Williamson.
“Once we figure out what the design of the building itself will be (and) staff is going to have the biggest amount of input into that, we’re still going to have to hire a design-build or whatever to do that work.
“We have to find a site. Again, staff will be the ones saying yes or no to where they want the site to be.”
Williamson continued, “We also have time when you consider that the garage isn’t going to be built until 2021.
“That’s where it’s in the budget. So this year is really, find the place where we’re going to built it and next year we can work on the design.”
