The Town of Canmore will move forward with $8.8 million in capital projects for 2015 after council unanimously approved its budget for next year.
That was after the budget committee trimmed $470,000 from the budget by deferring a number of projects into 2016-17.
Manager of Finance Katherine Van Kiempema noted as a result the capital plan in those years has grown significantly, with $46 million of planned projects in 2016 alone.
“You can see that we have many projects that were originally in 2015 and a lot of the recommendations coming out of the budget committee were to defer those projects,” she said. “Deferrals just puts off and next year there probably is going to be more great initiatives to put on the list.”
Developing organics collection, redesigning the Boulder Crescent recycling depot, trail interpretive signage and a new fire truck were all deferred.
Another reason for the increase in capital spending in 2016 is planned flood mitigation on Cougar Creek. The 2017 budget sits at $29.5 million, three times what is planned for 2015.
The funding of the projects for 2015 comes from a variety of sources including $5.6 million from reserves, $2.3 million in grants and $180,000 in debentures.
While some councillors were looking forward to the downtown enhancement plan being conducted in 2015, administration recommended deferring it as well.
“Back in June when we first brought the draft business plan to council it was administration’s recommendation the downtown enhancement plan not proceed in 2015 and a lot of that was also tied to the workload in our engineering department,” said Chief Administrative Officer Lisa de Soto.
Councillor Sean Krausert made the motion to delay, respecting the workload planning and engineering currently have, post flood.
“There are other organizations interested in partaking in this process and learning from its outcomes, however, I want to be sensitive to the workload of our planning department and engineering department,” he said.
Coun. Joanna McCallum supported the motion, but noted a number of projects underway in 2015 already are connected to the planning process.
“This one is a hard one for me because I really see the value in the downtown enhancement plan and there are a lot of things this year that informs that,” she said, adding the possibility of housing in the downtown core, transit and a conference centre are connected to the project. “I would hate for things to not happen in an appropriate order.”
