Capital Projects, Heliport, Gas Tax, and more discussed at Melfort’s Regular Council Meeting

The Babington Avenue Subdivision, as well as the Spruce Haven Park Fitness Circuit have been deferred to the 2021 Capital Budget. There are numerous projects on the Capital Budget, but according to Mayor Rick Lang, these were best suited to be deferred.

“Those are two things that we could put off without impacting, substantially,” he said.

The Babington Avenue Subdivison will save the city $862,906 while the Spruce Haven project will save the city $75,000. Lang said council feels saving that amount of money will help them limit the effects of the lack of cash coming in.

“We feel that with the deferral of these two particular projects, we’ve at least taken the pressure off the cash flow situation as we’re predicting that it will be impacted,” he said.

He added if they need to, they could look at deferring other projects as well as some tenders.

Heliport Project

Council also approved what could be a major step in the Melfort Heliport Project. They approved releasing the tenders for that project which has seen a fundraising drive for the last number of months.

Lang said when the project first came to the table, a decision was made where fundraising was needed.

“Fundraising would cover the cost of construction,” he said. “And we’re at that point now where it appears the fundraising is substantial enough to go to tender, so that’s what we’re doing.”

The project would help improve health care in the region, according to Lang and help shorten travel time for STARS Air Ambulance.

The North Central Health Care Foundation had a goal to raised $600,000 for the project in conjunction with the Melfort Health Advocacy Committee.

Service Connection Policy

Residents are going to be paying a bit more now if they need to repair or replace their sewer line after council approved the raising of fees by a large margin.

Previously, if a resident needed repairs to their sewer line because of tree roots or weeping tile that was used to make the line, they would have to pay $950 to help cover the costs of the project. Costs of those projects have risen now to between $3,500 and $5,000 leading to some lost revenue to the city.

“So there’s always a case of where the city is subsidizing the process,” Lang told northeastNOW. “And that’s for a specific reason, because often, a portion of the roots are on city property.”

The fee has now gone up to $1,700 as of May 1, and will increase to either $2,200 or $2,500 on August 1.

Gas Tax Allocation

The City of Melfort normally receives around $330,000 dollars a year from the federal gas tax allocation program, and they have decided what to do with a large chunk of this year’s.

The Melfort Airport has had some issues with it’s apron recently, and the budget to fix it is around $834,000. The city has attempted to get other Rural Municipalities and communities on board, but only a handful have done so. To help offset some of this cost, the city has decided to allocate $199,072 to finance the shortfall of municipal contributions towards to project. Lang said it was a surprise when they realized it was an issue.

“We didn’t realize it was as bad as it was until we did an evaluation of it,” he said. “[We] realized that it was something that had to be dealt with almost immediately.”

Lang said some of the communities or RM’s did get on board with the Heliport project, but not for the airport apron.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6

by Mat Barrett

Capital Projects, Heliport, Gas Tax, and more discussed at Melfort’s Regular Council Meeting

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