Peterborough County’s largest infrastructure project – the James A. Gifford Causeway, a 1.4 km span across Chemong Lake between Ennismore and Bridgenorth, is being fixed up and widened over several years.
The overall project scope which includes the rock widening along the sides of the causeway is now showing cost increases, according to a staff report.
The report lists projected costs forecast to 2024 including additional federal agency consultation ($102,764), enhanced environmental monitoring ($648,884) and additional construction work ($651,485) totalling $1.4 million dollars in increases.
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“Certainly council will be concerned about the cost impact associated with the scope changes and cost overruns, but we’re eagerly anticipating commencing this project again this winter,” county engineering manager Peter Nielsen told council on Wednesday.
The original budget for the rock fill widening presented in 2018 was $5.8 million, but now the projection to the end of 2024 is $7.2 million.
To July 31, 2020, the expenses for the causeway widening project are $5,480,530 with $2.5 million of that funded in 2019 and 2020 leaving an unfunded balance of $1,178,310, the report states.
To fund that overage, council was asked Wednesday to approve a transfer of $2.1 million from an infrastructure reserve and allocate $855,940 from the 2019 surplus for the project.
“That will allow the current construction costs to be addressed,” Nielsen said.
Nielsen told council that the 2020 work is completed and some of the 2021 construction work has been accelerated as a result of good winter weather conditions and truck management by the contractor.
Some of that accelerated work includes some of the rockfill.
In 2021, three culverts under the causeway will be extended by 9 metres at a cost of $290,000 to allow for a continuous rock embankment along the water edge.
Nielsen said the purpose of the culvert extension is for future construction of an additional 2 lanes on the causeway, which is several years down the road.
It has been endorsed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to amend the permit to do the work.
“The intent is to move ahead this winter and complete the remainder of the work,” he said.
“Some of the project scope changes are directly attributed to federal requirements. These were not fully understood at the beginning of 2019 and through 2019 we got a better handle on that,” said county infrastructure director Grant Murphy.
“Reality is this information wasn’t available as part of the 2020 budget review and that was perhaps a concern for council as to why it wasn’t identified in the 2020 capital forecast, but we didn’t have that information at that time.”
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Acting chief administrative officer Sheridan Graham advised doing the work now ‘in today’s dollars’ would save money over time and that council consider approving the work and additional costs but refer the funding to the budget committee to allow the construction to move ahead.
Cavan Monaghan deputy mayor Matthew Graham put a motion forward the work be approved to move forward but the funding model for the projects be deferred to the budget committee to come back to council with a report at a later date.
Cavan Monaghan mayor Scott McFadden supported the motion to have the budget committee have more ‘fulsome discussions’ about the funding stream.
“One of those items will be how these new costs are development charge eligible given it was a transportation master plan project which is 85 per cent covered over a 10-year span,” he said. “There should be more monies that are able to be recovered through development charges as opposed to simple transfers out of reserves.”
“I’m very supportive of what Matt is suggesting that we need to take a deep dive in whether it’s reserves or development charges or how we are going to go about doing that,” added Selywn mayor Andy Mitchell.
The motion passed unanimously.