Westlock County has plans to spend $4.7 million on capital projects this year, with funding coming from a combination of grants, reserves and special levies.
Council discussed and approved the 2015 Capital Budget at its Dec. 9 meeting, with the lion’s share of that money, $3.3 million going into Transportation Services.
Roughly half the money in transportation services will be used for the brushing program ($1.5 million), with $300,000 coming from municipal coffers, $600,000 from provincial Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) funding and the other $600,000 slated to come from a special levy.
“In the long term, once this program is complete, it will then enable us to reduce the cost of the road maintenance,” CAO Peter Kelly said. “This could be up to a three-year program should council desire to do so.”
Upgrades are planned for water services including new water valves and flushing hydrants for a total of $75,000, which will also be paid for by special levy.
As for how, exactly, that special levy will work, Reeve Bud Massey said that’s still up in the air. The idea is to put a levy in place similar to what urban municipalities do with sidewalks — when a sidewalk is replace, the municipality issues a levy to cover the cost instead of raising taxes.
Typically in a town or city, only the residents whose lots are adjacent to the sidewalk will pay the levy. When asked, Massey would not say if the brushing levy would only to landowners adjacent to the roads being brushed.
“We’re working on the details of that,” he said. “We do not have specific answers today; it’s a concept today.”
The rest of the transportation budget will be used for the Bridge Program ($700,000), various road programs ($1 million) and a new tractor ($100,000).
Council has earmarked $183,000 for software upgrades and building security upgrades, as well as $164,000 for a GPS system to track county vehicles.
“It will enable us to keep track and locate all assets that are moving,” Kelly said.
For Protective Services, council has approved $300,000 to go towards upgrading fire apparatuses, including some that are more than 30 or 35 years old — the National Fire Protection Association recommends replacing equipment after no more than 25 years.
There’s also $25,000 to look into sites for a possible new fire hall, if council chooses to ultimately build one.
“We do want to scope out where any future fire hall may go,” Kelly said.
For Recreation Services, $500,000 has been earmarked for the Tawatinaw Valley ski chalet, and another $28,300 for some upgrades at Long Island Lake.
In the past, county councils have not approved their capital budgets until they were also ready to approve their operating budgets. Massey explained the change this year is meant to make the county more cost-effective and proactive.
“Our new administration, and we agree, believes if we do it quicker we can start addressing the issues we want done in the next year and we can likely get better quotes and better responses to our requests for information about how much would it cost to do this,” he said.
