St. Albert city council will be under pressure to provide more room for city programs and equipment, as the 2014 draft budget contains several requests for more space.
On the operating budget side of things, a business case to lease office space for library administrative staff in downtown St. Albert is on the books for a proposed cost of $60,000 in 2014.
In the capital budget, a project charter to expand the Musée Héritage Museum proposes spending $362,250 in 2014 for a detailed design, and then $2.2-million in 2015 for construction costs. It is suggested grant funding could be sought.
The St. Albert 50+ Club building rehabilitation and expansion is also currently funded in the draft capital budget, a $2.3-million project that was approved by the previous council in August.
Fire Station No. 1 is in need of a renovation so it can fit its ladder truck there.
Meanwhile, unfunded requests in the capital budget include the city building rehabilitation, a transit garage expansion, a community library branch and expansion of Servus Credit Union Place.
Chris Jardine, general manager of community and protective services for the city, said there's a space crunch in many city facilities, including the administrative offices in St. Albert Place.
"As the city grows the reality of it is there is more staff required to maintain stuff," Jardine said.
He noted that storage rooms, file rooms and even the mayor's old boardroom have had to be converted into work stations for administrative staff.
The library request for leased office space is "another Band-Aid" to try and address space issues, Jardine said.
"The library has been kind of bursting at the seams for a while," he said.
Meanwhile, the proposed museum expansion goes back to a vision created when St. Albert Place was first built. That vision was to eventually have administrators leave the first floor to public institutions like the library and museum, Jardine said.
He noted that many displays and exhibits in the museum's possession aren't on display due to a lack of space.
Fire stations
Fire Station No. 1 is a 50-year-old building, he said, so from a functionality and livability perspective, "it's less than perfect.
"But that's not necessarily our biggest challenge. Our biggest challenge is that equipment today is very different than the equipment from the day when the hall was built. So our … ladder truck does not fit into that building," Jardine said.
While the truck is stored at Fire Station No. 3, Fire Station No. 1 is the ideal spot to keep it as it is closer to the central and southern city neighbourhoods where there are more tall buildings.
City recreation facilities are also bustling, Jardine pointed out. An unfunded Servus Credit Union Place expansion plan appears in the capital budget, and Jardine said the pool at Fountain Park Recreation Centre is also busy.
"As the community grows there becomes more desire for arenas, more soccer, more spontaneous basketball, things like that, so that's what the Servus Place expansion report spoke to," he said. "It's a great success story because you want the facilities to be busy and vibrant, but on the other hand if they're too busy and too vibrant it starts to wane your experience."
Mayor Nolan Crouse said council has not yet discussed space demands in context of the budget or otherwise.
"As a council you have to assess where the highest needs for expansion and growth is and … this council has not spent any time talking about what the highest priority for space is," Crouse said.
In an email to the library board that Crouse made public on his blog, he outlined a number of space demands known in the city, including the examples above.
He said there has to be analysis of which areas are in more of a crisis situation than others, because investing in expansions can lead to significant operating or capital costs, or sometimes both.
"I think there probably is (a demand for space) in every community in Alberta," he said.
However, while the need for space grows as a community's population increases, Crouse pointed out there are also pressures to keep tax increases low.
"No one's shared with me all the priorities yet," Crouse said.
He guessed the 50+ club rehabilitation and expansion would proceed – it was approved by the previous council – but otherwise some discussions will likely occur during budget deliberations over proposals like the museum expansion or space or programming for a youth centre.
"In January this council has to, during our planning session, land a little more of a stronger plan," Crouse said.
