Three design contracts for Elliot Lake’s infrastructure requirements were discussed at two special meetings this week. The meetings were open to the public.
Last Tuesday, Acting Director of Public Works, Bill Goulding, brought forward a report to the Public Services Committee recommending that council approve entering into three Project Development Agreements (PDA’s). The proposed agreements are for:
- The City’s Base Building Facilities - $135,000
- The Centennial Arena Project - $275,000
- The Water/Wastewater Project - $750,000
The recommendations came to the committee following a nearly year-long process that staff and Johnson Controls have conducted, evaluating Elliot Lake infrastructure. The preliminary evaluation process had been approved by council, March 27, 2023.
Goulding’s report notes, “Representatives from Johnson Controls came to Elliot Lake on April 25, 26, and 27, 2023 to perform on site inspections of prospective municipal facilities. Since that time, their engineering staff have been evaluating the potential of various projects in anticipation of presenting options to council for review.”
“This process has involved a substantial amount of input from municipal staff and collaboration with Johnson Controls’ technical staff and partners to provide the required background information and to establish project priorities.”
“In general, the focus has been to identify projects that address deferred maintenance at city facilities and that also have associated energy use reduction opportunities.”
All members of the council attended Tuesday's Public Services Committee meeting for the overview, comments and questions.
Public Services committee meeting, Feb. 13
“At its core, this report is about commissioning design work to do a great number of projects within the municipality,” Goulding said, offering a high-level view.
“We’re looking to get design done on projects. Now, if we’re going to commission design, we should plan on carrying through with projects, and that’s why the report’s so long.”
The report and related documents exceeded 50 pages of information.
Referring briefly to the 2019 work done at the Centennial Arena, Goulding said, “I really am not an advocate of doing that kind of thing again.” At that time, the city provided oversight to a project with two separate major contracts: structural repairs, and separately, roof repairs.
However, referring to the approach he recommended Tuesday, Goulding said, “having a project lead and design team that looked at all of the systems and coordinated all the design to make sure that the end product that we got out the other side was well considered and well executed, was something that I was really a proponent for. Still am.”
The total cost of the three PDA’s is about $1.2 million. Goulding noted there are two potential grants available presently for this type of design work. If we are successful at acquiring both, they would total $400,000.
“So, that drags the design costs down for all the projects quite a lot. So, if we’re talking about $800,000ish for design of that much work, that’s a real value,” he said.
Goulding also mentioned the potential for future energy cost savings, using the ESCO design approach - and the capacity of the vendor, “big enough to deliver on projects of the scale that we’re talking about.”
The committee heard there are significant repairs required at the wastewater plant. “The digester cover is broken right now, and it’s costing us at least $10,000 a month in natural gas to run boilers not on the digester.” Other repairs are also required.
Coun. Norman Mann spoke favourably, noting “there is an expectation (from funders) of a plan that any municipality will have for how to start paying for some of these things.”
“As we go ahead with funders, they’re going to want to see our plan over the next number of years in order to replenish those reserves, which, of course, is going to have impacts on the budget cycle.”
Coun. Charles Flintoff asked, “So, is this one of these examples that you’re saying the urgency is, ‘let’s get the arena open and then we look at some of this stuff after? ’”
Goulding: “No, I’m saying we have to do a bunch of stuff at once. So, the arena project is obvious and I’ve offered a schedule that offers a potential pathway towards a fall reopening.”
Coun. Merrill Seidel inquired about the lifespan of the work at the wastewater plant.
Goulding replied, using the digester cover as an example: “It’s failed within the last five years and it’s been in service since 1981. … We would hope to achieve the same performance.”
Interim CAO Rob deBortoli told the committee, “We’ve gone for years and years, running on budgets that have not really been structured to meet the needs of our community – to meet the needs of renewing and repairing our infrastructure.”
“We are in a very challenging time, and that’s how we got to be here,” deBortoli said.
Agreeing with a comment made earlier by Couns. Rick Bull, Mann said, “I think to Councillor Bull’s point about how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again, I think whatever committee decides tonight, goes to council.”
“And then council needs to send a message to this community that we won’t allow this to happen anymore – that we’re going to invest.”
“Taxpayers, truly, in the end – they want to see work being done. They want to see something tangible about what they’re paying for,” Mann said.
Council meeting, Feb. 15
Two days later, at the special council meeting, Feb. 15, two of the three PDA’s were covered by contract and bylaw and ready for council. Regarding the water/wastewater PDA, Goulding said, “I’m working with Johnson Controls right now to tighten up the schedule. … So, I’ll be bringing that to the next scheduled council meeting, or at least, that’s my intent as of right now.”
Coun. Flintoff said the PDA’s are, “‘step one’ of trying to get our infrastructure back up to par.”
Coun. Mann described the discussion, “a very good starting point for the work that we need to do.”
Goulding noted the timing. “The funding landscape right now is changing. So, [the province of] Ontario has a big push on core infrastructure funding. They’re just unraveling it … this week they’re starting to announce new funding programs that specifically relate to infrastructure.”
Mayor Andrew Wannan commented, “I think the focus of today, due to time sensitive nature of our repairs to Centennial Arena – that’s the urgency mainly, of this meeting.” And later, just before calling for the vote he said, “we can all appreciate the urgency for the need for our arena.”
Coun. Flintoff referred to infrastructure grants and added, “I know it doesn’t look very good, but we’re going to get this figured out. And the money – we’ll spend what we can. We’ll fix what we can.”