From things like new hires to unexpected heavy equipment repairs, a municipal meeting room, park improvements, and the Annex parking lot— the Town of Huntsville’s 2023 unbudgeted expenditures keep rising.
At a special meeting to be held today, staff is expected to ask Huntsville Council to approve an additional $270,000 in unbudgeted funds for the site preparation for the River Mill Park washrooms. $60,000 was already budgeted for the same in the 2023 budget bringing the total anticipated cost for site preparation and servicing to accommodate the washroom facility to $330,000.
The washroom facility itself (paid for by a donation from a community member) has been manufactured and is ready to be delivered from its NiuSmart Toilet production facility near Montreal but the site preparation has not been completed to receive it.
A report to council indicates that of the $60,000 set aside in the 2023 budget for site preparation to receive the washroom facility “$39,948 has been spent to date (67% of the initial funding). This funding has been used for tree assessment/removal ($3,400), evaluation of engineering requirements, and design of the site preparation ($36,548).”
The report also indicates that “During the design and build of the washroom facility, staff concurrently issued a competitive procurement process requesting bids for the site preparation work for the washroom. After the competitive process was closed, the Town began evaluation of the bid received. Only one (1) bid was received from a company in eastern Ontario. The bid price for the site preparation work was $400,000.”
According to the report, staff deemed the quote to be excessive. “Tulloch was further engaged by staff to evaluate site preparation options as Tulloch agreed with the Staff assessment that the $400,000 quoted was unreasonable even given current inflationary pressures.”
Staff, working with Tulloch, then conducted a market evaluation requesting bids from three local contractors:
• Hall Construction
• Fowler Construction
• HLD Muskoka
The report further states that staff “took the submissions and have eliminated certain items, to be completed using a separate contract, e.g., accessibility ramps. This was done as Staff assessment is that this work can be completed at lower cost if separated into its own contract. The final recommendation of adding an additional $270,000 is based on having HLD complete the site preparation work, including connecting the services and design of the pad to which the washroom is secured for approximately $200,000. The remaining $70,000 includes the use of crane services to lift the washroom into place, the connection of the washroom to electrical and municipal services, as well as the addition, under separate contract, of accessibility ramps to the building.”
A special council meeting has been called for today at 12 Noon to address the request.
You can find the staff report HERE (pdf).
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Here’s a suggestion for the town government. Take out the last row of parking at river mill. Put the washroom there along with some bicycle racks. It would make the playground to bandstand route safer as well