The Tumbler Ridge 2021-2025 financial plan has been bumped back after work to fix the bank at the Lions Flatbed Campground was pulled before the third reading.
The District was planning on putting rocks along the banks of the creek to prevent washouts from happening, after part of the road was washed out during flooding last year.
The District had asked for government funding for the project, but was unable to get a grant. Staff recommended just completing the project using District funds, but Council was unwilling to cover the full $875,000 projected for the repairs.
Funding for the work was to come out of surplus (80 percent), and out of the Peace River Agreement (the remaining 20 percent), but, with Council overspending this year’s budget by $197,000, a couple councillors, including Councilor Howe, were opposed to the additional spending. “I’m not comfortable with this,” said Howe. “That’s a huge price tag. I grew up here, and I’ve seen the entire park under water more than once. I’m concerned with spending 875,000 to put some rocks on the bank to hold it in place. I understand the previous one we did to protect the pump station did work, but it sits a little bit higher than the place that’s eroded. I think we need to look at other options down there rather than put some rocks down there and hope it does something good.”
CAO Jennifer Thompson says removing the project won’t change the fact that they are $197,000 over budget, as the money for that is coming from sources other than taxation, but Howe remained in opposition.
Howe says when it was first proposed, it was supposed to be funded. “When I first originally seen this come in, it was about a grant, and we were like, $875,000? We’ll get a grant? Sure, that’d be great. Go ahead and do it. But when we’re not getting the grant for it, then it comes down to ‘time out here. Do we need to do this to the level that they had proposed for the grant?’ I’m always concerned about when we look for a grant, and we don’t get it, then we just go ahead with it. Can we not bring that level down can we not have another look at this? Is there no other options for us? Can we not divert the creek? Can we not pull rocks towards the side? Can we not try to get the creek flowing in a different direction or something along those lines. The pump house has been here for 35 years and hasn’t gone nowhere yet. I don’t like the fact that we get the number for doing a grant, and then it doesn’t happen and then we just go, ‘well, we’ll take care of it ourselves.’ And at the end of the day we’re still $200,000 short on the budget so we got three choices here either increase revenue, so we increase taxes to get to $200,000 or we decrease spending some type of a type along the way, or we take more money out of reserves. And we’re continuing to do that. We’re taking more and more and more money out of our reserves that we’re supposed to be putting away for a rainy day, and we’ve got some rainy days coming.”
He points out that CNRL might is taking down the Pine River gas plant, and if the District loses all the CNRL facilities, that will be a $1.5 million hit. “That’s a huge hit, it’s more than 15 percent—closer to 20 percent—of what we collect in tax revenue. We’ve got to think about this. How are we going to either replace that money—which we can’t, we’d have to increase everybody’s taxes significantly—or we going to finally try to look for somewhere to cut some costs. If we continue to draw to reserves, we’re not going to have any money left there, when the time comes when we have to replace some of our underground utilities and facilities and the stuff that’s really, really expensive to spend on, we’re going to have to start borrowing. We’re going to go backwards. We need to look at some spots here where we can save some money. We’ve got some bad stuff coming in the future.”
But much of council was in favour of doing something. Some were worried that another flooding event might impact the pump station After much discussion, they decided to do a portion of the bank, to a total of $500,000.
This didn’t sit well with Councilor Krakowka. Krakowka is a member of the Lions and agrees the work needs to be done, but he wants to see the District try again to get a grant, so at the April 19 regular meeting of council, he moved to remove it from this year’s budget, and move it to next year. He says that, while it sounds good to do it over multiple years, that will most likely drive up the costs even more, as whomever does the work will have to bring their equipment in twice.
More problematic, he says, is the fact that every time the District just pays for something themselves, they are sending a message to the government. “Every time we apply for a grant and we don’t get the grant, we just go do it, so why would the government give it to us? They watch us just like we watch them. We constantly apply for grants and have no success getting them the first time around, so the District says ‘why don’t we just go do it?’ Why would give us the grant? They’ll just give it to somebody else. I think we’ve set that precedence with the government. That’s why I’m asking to hold off on this, because it gives them an opportunity to reapply for that grant through the Province, and give the reason why.”
His argument was persuasive enough to convince enough members of council to vote in favour of holding off for one more year that the item was withdrawn from the budget. However, the motion means staff has to go back and re-do the budget before it can be given its third reading.
Because there has to be at least 24 hours between the third reading and the final reading, Council will be having a special meeting sometime in the next couple weeks, though a date has not been officially set. Watch the District website, at www.districtoftumblerridge.com for updates.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
