The City of Quesnel is standing down a federal grant application for a new North Cariboo gymnastics facility and is now setting its sights on a trail development project for the West Fraser Timber Park.
The City had been set to submit an application to the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program for grant funding to construct a new North Cariboo gymnastics facility at 500 North Star Rd., on the northeast end of the Quesnel and District Arts and Recreation Centre, but that application will not move any further, after the Cariboo Regional District directors on the North Cariboo Joint Planning Committee voted against funding the local government share of the project costs through the North Cariboo Recreation and Parks Service. The local government share was expected to be up to $920,646.
The total cost of the project is $3,352,078.
Council voted not to proceed at its Sept. 29 meeting, two days before the grant deadline.
Jeff Norburn, the City’s director of community services, explained that the Joint Planning Committee (JPC) had indicated its support for an application from the City for a gymnastics facility at the strategic planning session on Sept. 8, but as the community development co-ordinator was filling out the grant application, it became clear the local government needed to confirm its share of the funding as part of the budget. Because there was no JPC meeting before the grant deadline, they did an online vote, and the motion failed.
“I think with regards to the gymnastics project, our hands are pretty tied unless council’s interested in backstopping the project,” said Norburn. “I think it’s intended to be a North Cariboo Recreation and Parks project, and I don’t know that would be appropriate.”
Mayor Bob Simpson was clear all the Quesnel councillors voted in favour of going ahead.
Councillors expressed disappointment at the outcome of the e-vote.
Hundreds and hundreds of people do gymnastics, and they are from the entire area, not just Quesnel, noted Coun. Scott Elliott.
“In my estimation, it should be a project that moves forward with all of us involved, and I’m proud of our crew for voting unanimously to move it forward,” he said. “At this point in time, I can’t recommend the City taking it on; I think it’s inherently wrong.”
City manager Byron Johnson said the City could proceed with the grant submission if council was willing to backstop the full $920,000.
“That would be done by a combination of surpluses and reserves,” he said. “However, we’re in an unusual year, particularly with COVID-19. Our surplus gets smaller each year as our budgeting gets tighter. We’ve deliberately done that where we’ve said ‘let’s budget closer to the actual reality of where we know the expenses are going to be in.’ Then with COVID on top of that, it’s put our surpluses in a bad position. What the result would be is if we said we want to go ahead and backstop this, we would have to do that out of reserves. If we were to choose to do that out of reserves, the reserve that we would have would be our capital re-investment reserve. That reserve is, as you know, allocated and earmarked towards lots of different capital functions, so if council was to decide to take funding out of that reserve, council would then have to enter into a borrowing bylaw, even though it’s our own reserve, to borrow for five years against that reserve and then pay that back over five years, or at least show that on our financial plan.
“The reality is probably all that money isn’t going to be spent, there could be some fundraising in the community or fundraising from other agencies, so it wouldn’t likely be that full amount, but that’s the commitment they would need to see. To show that level of commitment would require a borrowing bylaw, which would probably require a percent and a third of a tax increase against City taxpayers to show that repayment, so it gets very difficult in an already-challenging budget cycle to do that.”
What happens now?
The City has put the gymnastics project application aside and planned to submit an application to the same Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program grant for trail development and upgrades at West Fraser Timber Park instead.
“We hired a consultant earlier this year to take a look at West Fraser Timber Park and the trails in there and come up with a plan that includes basically three significant components or three different areas of work,” Norburn told council. “One is to upgrade the trails and add new trails inside the park, another one is to upgrade and improve the trail that goes from West Fraser Timber Park up to Borregard Road, basically connecting with Red Bluff, and then the third component is a connecting trail between West Fraser Timber Park and the Arts and Recreation Centre. The third component is a lot more complicated because there are some private property owners we have to work with, and there are some environmental issues because of Dragon Creek; they’re not insurmountable, but they aren’t ready to go right now. Basically, what we’re proposing is a project that would combine the first two phases or components, the trails inside the park and the connecting trail to Red Bluff, along with some preparatory work for the third phase.”
This project will cost $272,838, and Norburn says the grant would cover $200,072, while the City’s share would be $72,766.
“It’s a good project, and it’s basically shelf-ready or shovel-ready and ready to go,” Norburn told council.
Simpson says the City could earmark funds from its tax stabilization fund for this project — while also going after other grants.
READ MORE: City of Quesnel looking into constructing new gymnastics facility at Arts and Rec Centre
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