Council has started tweaking the city’s 10-year capital plans.
After getting a look at the proposed 10-year capital plans for repair and maintenance of municipal and utility facilities and infrastructure last month, council essentially began 2017 budget deliberations on Monday night during the standing committee of the whole meeting.
The “RMR” capital budgets – repair, maintain, replace – will be tentatively confirmed in June before getting final approval in December.
Monday night’s changes included pushing ahead with the water meter conversion, postponing an overhaul of the St. Albert Trail barrier wall, delaying a project to rehabilitate the waterfall at St. Albert Place, adding more money in 2017 for sidewalk and trail repairs, up the Arden Theatre ticket surcharge by 50 cents and adding some extra pickleball markings to tennis courts.
On the other hand, council rejected proposals by the mayor to further delay planning for renovations to Fire Station No. 1 and to postpone St. Albert Place safety and security changes.
Mayor Nolan Crouse proposed the majority of the changes. In proposing some changes, like the Arden ticket surcharge, he said he was trying to find places to save money.
“In the absence of policy, I just go around looking for money,” Crouse said.
He also looked for some places to spend it, proposing a $150,000 increase to the sidewalk budget to advance installation of sidewalks where there are none and adding $20,000 to the 2017 capital budget to add pickleball lines to more tennis courts.
“This is almost straight politics from our pickleball advocacy that we’ve all received,” Crouse said. Council said yes unanimously to both the sidewalk and pickleball motions.
Council rejected any further delay to at least doing design work on renovations to Fire Station No. 1 so that the aerial fire truck can at last be housed there.
Crouse noted that the project has been pushed back for most of a decade.
“We’ve delayed it 10 years or about, we can delay it one more year in my opinion,” Crouse said.
Coun. Cam MacKay supported the mayor, noting that St. Albert doesn’t have a huge amount of tall buildings yet.
The aerial truck is needed to serve both tall buildings but also buildings with large footprints, like Costco or some of the schools. The truck is currently housed at Fire Station No. 3, but it has long been suggested it would be better to have it at Fire Station No. 1, a more central location and closer to buildings that would need the truck if there is an emergency.
The rest of council decided the design portion, which was set to go forward in 2017, could proceed.
“We need to fit (the aerial truck) in a central location,” Coun. Cathy Heron said.
Coun. Sheena Hughes championed the idea of adding money into the sidewalk and trail repair budgets to help begin to address places where the infrastructure has been assessed as being in poor or critical condition. She received the unanimous support of council on her motions.
The 10-year plans look at 2017-2026. Proposed “growth” projects, which means projects triggered by new population, will be dealt with in separate municipal and utility capital plans that will be in front of council in the fall.
