At Carleton Place council’s recent committee meeting, councillors received two shocks on the upcoming works to refurbish and expand the Town’s water and wastewater treatment plants.
The first was the low tender bid for the works which came in at just under $146 million, $32 million more than was budgeted.
After recovering from that unpleasant surprise, Mayor Toby Randell delivered the second item of bad news.
He was referring to information he received from a recent meeting of area home-builders indicating that the Province’s upcoming budget would overhaul development charges and likely reduce the amount of those developer paid funds that could be used on these two critical projects.
Randell suggested deferring any committee decision until after the budget was brought down in Queen’s Park despite tight timeline pressures from both the contractors involved and provincial grants already approved.
Deputy Mayor Andrew Tennant agreed with the Mayor’s deferral motion.
Town staff confirmed that all but $12 million of the projects’ funding would come from development charges and not current taxpayers.
Council’s committee voted to defer any decision until after the Province’s budget was made public on May 15th.
story by Brian Turner