Burnaby city council has voted to establish an advisory panel to review the ballooning costs of city infrastructure projects.
The motion was proposed by Coun. Pietro Calendrino amid soaring design and construction costs for several community centre redevelopments.
It came after council approved a plan to replace the Burnaby Lake Recreation Complex, with a new pool and ice sheets, at a cost of $240 million, over $50 million more than originally budgeted.
That plan was already overdue, as staff worked to bring costs — and scope — down from a potential $340 million. Nevertheless, Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley still described the price as “ridiculously high.”
It is not the only project in Burnaby facing challenges — cost overruns have plagued the city in recent years, with Burnaby spending hundreds of millions more than it thought to provide everything from pools to police stations.
In proposing the motion Calendrino questioned why construction for residential projects could come in at about $600 per square foot, while civic projects were costing in the ballpark of $1,300 per square foot.
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Calendrino said the city should take a page out of the Metro Vancouver Regional District’s book, and appoint a design board to maximize efficiencies.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation applauded the goal of saving money, but warned bringing on a review board could come with problems of its own.
“If this advisory panel is actually able to find meaningful cost reductions, to trim some of the fat around these big capital projects, that’s a good thing,” federation B.C. director Carson Binda said. “But right now it still remains to be seen … if this will just be an added layer of bureaucracy that will take up even more time and money.”
Matti Siemiatycki, director of the University of Toronto’s Infrastructure Institute said the problem Burnaby is facing is not uncommon among municipalities, and stems from the interaction of politics and human nature.
Based on engaging concept art and architectural renderings, engineers, politicians and city staff over promise, and then can’t back away once they see the bill.
“All of those features that were critical to getting the project sold to the public and approved in council then become hugely expensive and challenging to build once they sift from the drawing board to the construction site,” he said.
Council ultimately voted unanimously to approve the review board concept, however when it will be empaneled and who might be a member remains unclear.
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