Further to a story we brought you yesterday regarding the escalating cost of the site preparation required at River Mill Park to receive the estimated $300,000 prebuilt washroom facility donated by a private citizen, a special Huntsville Council meeting was called yesterday to deal with the situation.
At that meeting, staff were before council asking for a 350 per cent increase to their original estimate to prepare the site for the washrooms. They were requesting an additional $270,000 of unbudgeted funds on top of the $60,000 set aside in the 2023 budget for the same.
“The groundwork was a collective work that was done with a number of our Town staff members as well as using external consultants, and at the time that we developed the budget for the site preparation for the washroom, prices were much lower,” said Director of Operations and Protective Services for the Town, Tarmo Ukkivvi. He added that the washroom facility built in Montreal is a unique custom design and staff had no comparators.”There are no comparators out there. It’s a unique build. It’s a custom design, so it’s very difficult to gauge the market ahead of time to see what pricing would actually be. The staff best estimate at the time was that $60,000 was quite sufficient to get the site preparation work completed.”
He said staff tried to fastrack the work, “that also meant that potential bidders didn’t have as much time to actually bid on contracts and do proper cost evaluations and provide us with detailed costing on the project. Underneath all of that, we have been experiencing some significant cost increases in materials, in labour, and in contracted prices,” he told council, adding that when the initial tender went out it resulted in only one (out-of-town) bidder at an estimate of $400,000, which staff thought was “out of this world high.”
Staff then went back to the consultants and worked together to come up with a different approach—one that included breaking up the project into smaller components. In the end, Uukkivi said they were able to bring the cost of the site preparation down to $330,000 from $400,000. (Details HERE.)
“Let me be very frank and blunt here today,” said Councillor Cory Clarke. “I’m extremely unhappy with what’s in this report. I think what we’re being asked to agree to is unacceptable and I think, in my opinion, is financially irresponsible.”
Clarke said he has seen a pattern with projects that arrive at the council table “and more and more they’re drastically over budget… that pattern has to stop.”
Councillor Dione Schumacher agreed. She said she’d like to see staff get three quotes for projects moving forward, otherwise, they should be put on hold. She also reminded council that the washroom donation was seen as a win by the previous council as the washroom facilities at the Chamber had been rented as were the portable washrooms.
Councillors Bob Stone said he wants to see a breakdown of the project cost and Clarke further questioned why other options had not been considered such as changing the location for the washrooms at the park. “There’s just way too many questions and not enough answers here today,” said Clarke.
Huntsville Mayor Nancy Alcock said if council isn’t happy with staff’s report, a clear direction should be given. “We do have built washrooms. We have a very generous citizen and we actually have built washrooms so I think it’s incumbent upon the council then to say ‘if we don’t like this option, then we need to give staff some direction as to where might we put these washrooms, if that’s an issue, if there’s another location. Again, they’re meant for River Mill Park so we are kind of within that geography, that’s what we have to think about,” she told Clarke, adding “we’ve all heard the message.”
Alcock told council that if they wanted to get further information “as to some of the details around the costing, that unfortunately because of our protocols or rules and regulations, we have to do that in closed [session]and we can direct staff to bring a report in closed for the end of the month,” she added.
Councillor Scott Morrison said he’d like to avoid a closed session discussion as much as possible, noting that residents have a right to know where the money is going. “The donation side of it, that can’t handcuff us into committing to spending $300,000 worth of taxpayer dollars,” he said, adding that everything has to be on the table including the penalty for cancelling the project or finding out if the bathroom facility can be used in another location entirely. “We need to look at everything on how we spend this money for the taxpayer and I can’t see us spending [these amounts]… when you could’ve bought the whole Chamber building for $600,000, you know what I mean, with a parking lot.”
Morrison also questioned the process noting that the previous council had committed to the washroom and the removal of trees “without even having any quotes yet on what it was going to cost to install… we’ve got ourselves in a bit of a pickle here,” he said, adding that going forward, “let’s make sure that we have all of the numbers.”
Alcock said when the $60,000 was approved by the previous council it was her understanding that that would cover the site preparation work.
Deputy Mayor Dan Armour said council needs to focus on the fact that the washroom facility is paid for. “So we need to focus on just the $330,000 and moving it and finding a new location I think is important if that works, anything that we can do to save any bit of money,” he said, adding that perhaps it can be located closer to the actual water and sewer and electrical connections as long as it stays within the park.
Armous asked whether the washroom facility could be resold or stored until council figures things out. Uukkivi said he could not comment on the manufacturer’s ability to resell the washroom but said it could be stored by a third party for free.
Councillor Jason FitzGerald said he had researched the cost of installing the self-cleaning washroom facility in other municipalities “and the costs seemed to be in a range from $400,000 to $600,000. I think the major focus on all this was public safety and lower cost of maintenance throughout the life expectancy of the facility and there was resistance offered by the public in most locations where they did install these, but they installed them.”
Councillor Clarke noted that there are porta-potties at the park. He said they may not be fantastic facilities “but they certainly don’t cost $300,000. If there’s vandalism to those, they’re easily replaced and cheaply replaced.”
Morrison said he had just been at an event where only porta potties were available “and it was fine,” he said, adding that should be a consideration “and I think we need to pump the brakes as a council and as a staff, and just look at everything.”
In the end, council deferred making a decision and asked staff to return in July with a more detailed report on cost and the possibility of getting out of the project. Council also asked staff to explore other options including other locations for the washrooms and return to council with their findings in September.
Related:
Town’s unbudgeted expenditures keep rising including River Mill Park washroom installation
Opening of River Mill Park washrooms delayed
River Mill Park could have washrooms in place by next spring
Donor of washrooms for River Mill Park says Huntsville means a lot to her
Huntsville Council approves tree removal at River Mill Park
Mystery donor has offered the Town $300,000 to build permanent washrooms at River Mill Park
Councillors reject porta-potties as permanent washroom solution at River Mill Park
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Rudi Stade says
Council should not be held hostage to ridiculous cost increases. Nobody needs all those bells and whistles to spend a minutes in there once a week or month. Why not purchase two Porta-Potties and encase them inside a nice wooden shed, like the storage shed beside the bandshell? A nice Muskoka look and very discreet. How much could maintenance cost for them? Certainly less than the Chamber building.
Better yet, for a fraction of that very generous donation, I could build a miniature castle around them out of local, vandalism-resistant Muskoka granite, no roof required. The tourists would love it!
Brian Samuell says
I’m not surprised, everything costs way more when you deal with the local bureaucracy. When I was on the Board of what is now Montessori school we had a contractor on site digging up the back side right next to the building. For a couple of thousand dollars he was willing to dig around the building and install weeping tile to prevent basement flooding.
Long story short, the town which still owned the building, needed to prepare tender documents and the submissions came in for ten times as much. So we only had to pay the bill for the document preparation which turned out to be more than what the contractor would have done the work for.
Out of control sunshine’s.
Tom Spivak says
Once again we see how our councilor’s of the past flew by the seat of their pants in making decisions with our tax money.
Reality is these washrooms are for tourists use, will absolutely be vandalized, and continue to drain tax resources at the benefit of the shops on main street.
Thank you to the councilors that have the nerve to push back on this.
When the big name contractors in this town bid it’s because they have so much work they could care less if they actually get the bid so they go high.
Last year a water project I worked on in Bracebridge was bid by two of the big companies in Muskoka at $145,000 and $65,000.
The bid ended up going to a company in Orillia at $7000.
Do your homework councilors!
Ruby Truax says
Last summer the original idea for a washroom in River Mill Park was to repurpose the kiosk that used to be in Kent Park, at an estimated cost of $52,000 plus operational costs of about $14,000 for cleaning, maintenance, etc. Then council learned about this automatic, self-cleaning, “vandal-proof” washroom and decided that the cute little kiosk wasn’t good enough. So now we’re up to an investment of $630,000 … the price of an average person’s HOUSE … for two toilets.
The cost of maintenance and vandalism repair seemed to be the deciding factor, but that doesn’t make financial sense. I mean, if they’d taken the $52,000 option, the HALF A MILLION DOLLARS they’d have saved could have maintained that kiosk for 35 years … or rebuilt it every ten years. And we’d have had a cute little bathroom in River Mill Park by now.
The fact that Mr. Ukkivvi and Ms. Corry believe that this is an appropriate request to make of taxpayers, particularly now when so many of us are struggling, shows that they are completely out of touch with the people who pay their salaries.
Brian Tapley says
Costs go up but really, a two door washroom costs a third of a million dollars???
And another third to “prepare a site”.
What is the sit? Covered in gold leaf maybe?
I thought these essentially portable washrooms as used on many golf courses claim to fame was that they cold be set almost anywhere on a simple gravel pad, or maybe sort of standard concrete post foundation.
How the heck this gets to a third of a million dollars is quite a stretch.
Maybe they need to blast rock and string several hundred feet of pipe and wire?? If so why choose that site?
The whole reason for prefabricated buildings such as this is that they are supposedly cheaper to build in a factory and ship than to build from scratch on site. What happened here?
These costs are not ridiculous, they are way beyond that. We have lots of contractors in the area and if one of them can’t figure a way to build a tiny little washroom like this for a heck of a lot less, site prep and all, there is something seriously wrong with the process.
Just because it is tax dollars does not mean you need to build by pasting 20’s together with crazy glue.
Nancy Long says
cctv….bring it to our town and stop the vandals!
ross carlin says
Dear Town Council, I would like to request a 350% decrease in my taxes please. Apparently the inmates are running the asylum. Wanting to have a closed meeting is revealing in itself. What can’t be said that the public might hear? This is about..a…toilet… not state secrets.
Thomas R Spivak says
So many good points here.
This madness with our money has to stop, we have more than twice as many seniors in Muskoka as compared to the rest of the province and our taxes keep going up to support these pet projects of our council with absolutely no regard for the voters in Huntsville.
Some members of council behave like teenagers with mom and pops credit card.
I worked on a project in Bracebridge a little over a year ago and the water line project was bid by two of the largest contractors in Muskoka at $145,000 and $65,000. A wide variation.
It was ultimately done by an Orillia firm for $7000 to District specifications.
Seems this tell something about our local companies.
Please! lets revisit this, shop out of town for contractors, look at other options.
Robert Graziano says
Forget the washrooms. They will be just another target for the moronic vandals in this town.
Allen Markle says
In town yesterday morning and some of the talk was about the s#@t- show some local projects are becoming. How a project with an estimated cost of $60,000.00 or so, in about a year, could cost double that figure. I don’t think workers wages have doubled, so where are the extra charges coming from?
Concerning the washroom facilities, graciously donated by a citizen, which now sits (get it?) in limbo, because charges for the work of installing the unit seems to have skyrocketed. The whole project is about the same price as a reasonable home. Have salaries gone up that much?
Or is there something else awry here? If the initial cost projections are generated by staff, how can these estimates be so far from the real figures? Is this to become a regular occurrence? I’m no fan of some of the asinine limbs (my opinion) our council swings out on, but are they carrying the can for some less than stellar performances by some of our “Sunshine Citizens”?
Miss project estimations by 50 to 100% or more in private industry and you would run the risk of becoming an ex-employee. It would seem the only place those types of failures can exist long, is in government. So everyone will have to instruct the children, and some of us elder citizens, to just “Hold on ’til you get home!”
Hard to find a tree now that developers are having them all cut down.
David gordon says
How about we hear from several of our local contractors about the cost. Their silence is deafening!
Paul Grant says
It appears that our local municipal government has been taking lessons from Trudeau on how to over spend and waste the tax payers money. With most Canadians now taking the position against Trudeau and trying to oust him from office, WE Too should look at cleaning house of some of our own town council members. PLEASE REMEMBER WHO IS VOTING FOR WHAT and let’s send them packing! This town can’t afford to have these irresponsible people controlling our spending.
David McQuay says
Pardon my language folks but what the H*** is going on down there?
Allen Markle says
Paul Grant; Note that it is a couple of councilors who put the brakes on this unusual expenditure.
Tarmo Ukkivvi: If your people used the “uniqueness” of this facility and the lack of “comparators” to be found, to be a problem, might I suggest they could be using the 3Bs, (bullshit baffles brains) on you. This is not a unique, one-off structure, built only for the fine bottoms of the folk in Huntsville, plus our summer guests. It is an engineered unit with specifications, for sale anywhere. You don’t need “comparators” since all your people need do, is contact the builder and ask for those specifications.
Would a granular base or a concrete slab be the best? Or granite, like Tombstone territory (Kent Park). Ask them stuff like that. Let their computer send your computer the information, and inside two or three days, you’ll know what you need to know….. technically.
I would surmise you will need a hydro feed, and a water and sewer line. You find those and dig a trench to the pad you have built to the specs. supplied.
But I’m sure you know all that, and what we’re getting is doublespeak. Have a word with the help. Just a suggestion.
Nancy Long says
So what is wrong with putting the washroom building on the last row of the parking lot at River Mill and also incorporating a proper bike stand for the courageous people who get out on their bikes!
Less car parking is okay!