The Village of Clyde has asked Municipal Affairs for an extension to revamp its 10-year capital plan to comply with a ministerial order contained within the municipality’s viability plan.
Specifically, the ministry directed council to complete all “Priority 1” infrastructure upgrades in its capital plan within five years. However, council agreed that wouldn’t be realistic and requested an extension to Feb. 28, 2018 to put together a compliant capital plan.
“That way we can have, during the budgeting process, the time to look at the 10-year capital plan, get those definitions of what the priorities mean, and get a chance to resubmit,” said village CAO Kim Hale at the Nov. 13 council meeting.
Priority 1 projects, as defined in Associated Engineering’s 2015 infrastructure audit, are those that need to be completed immediately since the present condition may impact public health, safety and the environment. Those include lagoon upgrades, sidewalk and sewer replacements and water main looping.
Priority 2 projects are upgrades that must be done in two to 10 years, and Priority 3 projects in 10 to 20 years.
Hale and engineers from Associated Engineering met with ministry staff in October to come up with solutions so that the capital plan would satisfy the ministerial directive.
She said the group talked about defining the infrastructure priorities and whether addressing infrastructure meant assessing or replacing it. They also discussed the level of service the village would like to provide to residents — for example maintaining sidewalks on one side or both sides of the road.
“Associated Engineering is getting a report together to explain exactly in writing, in black and white, on paper, what do the Priority 1s mean,” Hale noted. “Does it mean it has to be done or does it have to be looked at?”
“Some of the Priority 1s, for instance waterlines, they may be exceeding their life expectancy on paper but if they’re perfectly fine, is it a good idea to rip those out and replace them? They’re saying, perhaps it’s an idea to look at them versus replace them, so that’s addressing it.”
She noted Municipal Affairs is reviewing Associated Engineering’s draft report for edits and the report will be before council in December.
The village submitted its capital plan in July and informed the minister that it couldn’t be compliant with the order for several reasons: the $4 million infrastructure upgrade price tag; current village grant revenue totalling a little under $250,000; a lack of guaranteed funding from grant applications; capital projects receiving a limited portion of the operating budget’s $327,000 tax revenue; and the village’s maximum debt limit of $1.104 million.
