With a little help from the MD of Bonnyville and favourable tenders, the City of Cold Lake will be able to complete three phases of their airport enhancement project.
“The City of Cold Lake has received some very positive tender outcomes in regards to the results on development of the paving of the taxiways out at the Cold Lake Regional Airport,” expressed city CAO Kevin Nagoya. “We wanted to confirm if council wanted to proceed, because the intent was to proceed with phase one of this project, but there’s an opportunity to go as far as doing all three phases, based on the results, and by introducing funding that has come in from the MD’s contribution.”
The MD of Bonnyville has agreed to commit $500,000 towards upgrades to the Cold Lake Regional Airport taxiways, funding the city was grateful to receive.
“I like the idea of increasing and doing all three phases, now that the MD has committed their additional dollars. I understand it’s more additional dollars for us, but we can probably get those three phases cleaned up and out of the way,” Coun. Bob Buckle stated during council’s meeting on Tuesday, April 9.
In order to complete all three phases this year, the city will have to contribute an additional $406,000 towards the roughly $1.6-million project.
While some councillors felt the money could be better spent elsewhere, Nagoya explained how the city already has seen some interest in lots within phase three.
”We do have expressions of interest in that area, more particularly that northeast lot… If council made a decision on phases one and two only, we thought maybe we could come up with an alternative budget to try and get access to that one lot. Then, the next time you come in there, we could try and do those other lots and have a much bigger capital investment.”
Rather than revisit the project later down the road, Mayor Craig Copeland wanted to see the city pay up and commit to all three phases.
“When I looked at this, I was surprised we were able to do this… let’s just get this project done so we can walk away from this site for the next fiscal year. If we can complete all phases, to me, one and done, let’s get it done, and then we have a property that we can market… Now, we can kick the tires and see if it fills in quickly and we won’t have to come back on the project,” he expressed.
Buckle agreed, “It seems to be the best cost efficiency is to get it done while the crew is out there, as opposed to doing a piece now and saying we’ll go back a year or two from now and get another quote, put it back into the budget, and then so on and so forth.”
Coun. Kirk Soroka stressed the city’s current initiatives to start diversifying the city’s economy, specifically towards the aerospace and defence sector.
He noted, this is one step in that direction.
While phases one, two, and three would see the paving and widening of taxiways throughout the airport, a fourth phase, which wasn’t included in the tender, has the city paving a parking/tie-down area to the north.
“We would love to have this as a parking area for incoming visitors, yes it’s important, but we didn’t tender it that way. We thought the taxiways were higher on the priority list,” said Nagoya.
Coun. Chris Vining emphasized his concern with allocating more dollars towards the project.
“I wasn’t a big fan of this one in the budget, just because of where our priorities were and where we were looking for taxes, but that being said, to get the quote in where we got it, to be able to get it to phase one and if we budgeted to get it the $1.2-million to get it to phase two, the way I view it in terms of the MD funding, the project at the time for this year was this one piece. This is what we were looking at doing,” he stated. “I’m in the opinion that for the value to what we’ve expressed to the taxpayers when we passed the capital budget, was this was the phase that we were going to do, and if we now have money from the MD, then that’s money better spent on other projects.”
Vining continued, “I understand we’re looking out and looking future-wise, however, even within what we’re talking about in doing all these other projects and these other phases… I would hate to see us jump in there and do that and wind up in a situation where we have to move things around… I’m not really in favour of going down that road and chasing all three.”
Copeland explained how the MD of Bonnyville contributing to the project was “significant in itself, and I would rather just get it done and move on to another project.”
He added, “I’m really happy the price has come down so significantly. Yes, we could use the money for other projects… I think we should just get it done, then it’s a checkmark and we can move on.”
The motion to go ahead with all three phases passed with Vining and Coun. Jurgen Grau voting against.
