The City of Nanaimo hasn't secured the funding to rebuild its public works yard, but staff now have the go-ahead to begin on detailed design work for the project.
At a meeting Monday, Feb. 24, city council voted to spend $1.8 million from reserves to proceed with detailed design and costing to build a fleet maintenance facility and a crew and administration building at the works yard on Labieux Road.
In December, council asked staff to report on options for moving ahead with the project, following a third failed attempt at gaining alternative approval for long-term borrowing.
This week, council came back with that report and a recommendation to fund the detailed design work with $1.3 million from the general asset management reserve, $162,000 from the sewer operating reserve and $324,000 from the water operating reserve.
"If we advance the design further into the design phase, that gets us greater certainty into what the project will look like and it allows us to refine the costing a little bit," said Bill Sims, the city's general manager of engineering and public works. "Ideally, that will allow us to reduce the contingency."
According to the staff report, the design work will need to be completed whether works yard upgrades move ahead in the short term or long term, and will be "an investment which will hold its value."
The report added that city staff are considering an "integrated project delivery approach" to design and construction, which brings contractors and designers together with the city "to collaboratively solve problems with the benefit of real-time pricing and constructability feedback."
The report presented options for funding the public works yard rebuild, including long-term borrowing, increasing property taxes and user rates, or increasing taxes and user rates while also drawing from reserves and deferring other projects. The report didn't include any recommendations on funding any part of the project other than the detailed design and costing work.
"Staff are still of the opinion that long-term borrowing is entirely appropriate for this generational project…" Sims said. "The funding for that project is spread across a generation. The more people move here, the more people are paying for it, the greater the cost is spread across."
Most of council supported staff's recommendation regarding the design work, with Coun. Erin Hemmens calling it a "good, solid step forward." Coun. Ian Thorpe said council heard from citizens during the AAPs that they wanted more cost certainty surrounding the public works yard rebuild.
"And that's what this will give us, and I think it will therefore inspire greater voter confidence in the need for this project to go ahead," he said.
The vote was not unanimous, however. Coun. Tyler Brown said there's been lots of information made available about the public works yard project, but that information hasn't led him to the same conclusions as staff about the right way to proceed.
"I think it's a lot of money to not have a secure way of funding the project and ultimately, I think you're spending, likely, on plans that are going to need to be re-done," he said.
Coun. Ben Geselbracht said while new public works facilities are much-needed, he isn't convinced that the current site of the public works yard is the best location for it, and Coun. Hilary Eastmure voiced some similar opinions.
"Our processes to this point have brought us to what is actually an opportunity to re-think what our priorities are and this project in general," she said.
Mayor Leonard Krog said that "decades" of city councils have been unwilling to "bite the bullet" and upgrade Nanaimo's public works yard, and he disagreed with the notion of re-thinking the entire project.
"It needs to be done, it's in the public interest to do so," he said. "To pretend that there is some alternative where we can punt it down the road a little more to some other council or perhaps after the election and hope it will all go away, well it ain't going away."
Council voted 6-3 in favour of staff's recommendation, with Brown, Geselbracht and Eastmure opposed.
