The Rotary Spirit Centre’s arena and fieldhouse will be much cooler next summer as the town is moving forward with a request for proposals for the installation of air conditioning and dehumidification at the facility.
Councillors passed a motion at their July 13 meeting to move ahead with the $250,000 project, with $200,000 covered off by MSI grant funding and the remainder to come from surplus or reserves.
CAO Dean Krause said once installed, the expected annual operating cost is approximately $17,000. As a result administration looked into the possibility of installing energy saving technologies to offset the cost.
“There’s a firm that works in cogeneration, so what cogeneration is, is basically a power plant that provides heating and cooling in the building while producing electricity,” Krause said. “The capital cost of that upfront is $1.16 million. Their estimate to us is it would save us about $97,000 per year in power.”
Alternatively, Krause suggested council could go ahead with just the air conditioning for now and continue to explore energy-saving technologies.
“The advantage of putting it off and doing more research is there are grants that can be obtained for such a project,” he said.
Council opted to move ahead with putting the air conditioning project to tender and table consideration of adding energy saving technology.
Krause said a timeline for the project would be known after the RFP process closes, but said it should be ready for next year’s 100th anniversary events.
“If we go conventional, we’ll know it will be ready by the 100th anniversary, next year’s graduation,” he said.
“We have some heavy usage coming up in 2016.”
Coun. David Truckey questioned why the town would want to go ahead with the project this year since it wouldn’t get any use this year.
“Do we have to do the installation this year, or can we do it in the spring?” Truckey asked. “If we commence the project in January it’s a lot different. We’re going to spend $250,000 on something we’re not going to use this year.”
“I don’t want to wait until January to do the RFP and then you’re ensuring you won’t have it in time for your two big events,” mayor Ralph Leriger countered. “Let’s at least see what our costs are going to be.”
“I’m OK with that, but I’m getting feedback from the ratepayers saying we’ve missed the boat for this year,” Truckey said.
“They said, as ratepayers, we should be getting our ducks in a row and do installation next year.”
Leriger said there would likely be some complaints if there were no air conditioning in by next summer.
“I would expect we’ll probably get some feedback if we miss the boat for next year,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
