SANDRA M STANWAY
Brooks Bulletin
The county is hoping the municipality will get permission to use a portion of its Canada Community-Building Fund (CCBF) grant to cover additional costs for the Lake Newell Resort path.
Last week council gave three readings to amend the debenture bylaw for the Resort path.
In 2023 the construction of the path was estimated at $1 million. The county would have paid $250,000 from recreation funds while Resort homeowners paid the balance through a debenture of about $231.87 annually or $2,777.78 for a one time payment.
However, the tender closed last month and the costs, including an optional path to connect Block 1 to the path, were higher than anticipated.
The bids for construction were between $1.56 million and $1.91 million including the option path connections and between $1.38 million and $1.66 million excluding the optional connection.
County CAO Matt Fenske recommended to council that instead of abandoning the project and re-advertising with higher local improvement rates, that administration seek permission to use the CCBF to cover additional costs.
If that is granted, a 10 per cent increase over the estimated costs advertised in local improvement tax would be shared between the residents and the county’s recreation fund.
The updated costs would see the residents pay about $245.70 per year or a one time fee of $3,055.56 instead of an annual rate of $231.87 or a one time fee of $2,777.78.
The county would pay $275,000 from recreation and use $683,000 of its CCBF for the project.
The county has about $950,000 in its CCBF fund. Of that $450,000 is earmarked for the Lake Newell Resort lift station.
The county is expecting about $400,000 from the government in the 2025 CCBF annual grant. The grant funds are paid when sufficient applications have been made to the program.
Councillor Greg Skriver, who represents Division 5 including Lake Newell Resort said the connector path would link with Block 1.
“It would link them much better to the rest of the Blocks that are out there,” he said.
He said his preference was to have the additional path which would link everybody but it would also finish the project.
He said there are other things that will need to be taken care of by the community in the future, such as lighting but it is not part of the current project.
The tender for the path was to have been awarded on Thursday but it will wait two weeks to ensure the municipality can use the CCBF funds.
If the county does not get permission to use the funds they would have to consider other options including rejecting the tenders and re-advertising the local improvement plan with a higher project cost estimate, consider allocating additional funding from the recreation fund or shelve the project.
