City councillors are being asked to make decisions on which new facilities could be built, which ones can be repaired and which ones need to be torn down.
A staff presentation at a City of Nanaimo’s governance and priorities committee meeting Monday provided information about the munipality’s more than 200 buildings and appealed to councillors for direction.
Shelley Legin, the city’s general manager of corporate services, noted that financing rates present an opportunity for the city to borrow $15 million with about $1 million in debt servicing.
“We can get very creative there, if in fact we’re vacating, for example, another building that’s fully depreciated but we could lease it to another party, we could use some of that leasing net income back to the city to pay down the debt servicing on a brand-new building,” she said. “So you’re thinking strategically, financially, about the future. We have some opportunities, or, I like to call them, levers to pull.”
Some of the facilities priorities council members mentioned most were a consolidated public works facility, expanded RCMP detachment, and a south-end community centre.
Coun. Ian Thorpe said he would be “very interested” in looking at options around multimillion-dollar projects, especially if the alternative is waiting for inflation and higher construction costs.
Mayor Leonard Krog said the city could spend nine times as much on debt servicing as it does now, but said council should use that capacity “wisely” and to the best public advantage.
“I think what we should be looking at in the next year or two is what the priorities are based on community interest, public need, safety, but not necessarily start everything overnight and use up that wonderful capacity,” Krog said.
Coun. Tyler Brown said he would want to consider new facilities at the same time as other major expenditures such as the waterfront walkway and water supply infrastructure that might change his comfort level with borrowing.
Staff is asking for council to make decisions on a list of facilities including the Chase River Activity Centre, the Departure Bay Activity Centre, the Departure Bay Kin Hut, the Nanaimo Curling Centre, public works buildings and RCMP buildings.
Staff would also like direction on stadium options as far as investing in improving Caledonia Park, Rotary Bowl or both.
Some of the other “community-identified requests” in Monday’s presentation included Port Theatre expansion; Nanaimo Art Gallery expansion; waterfront paddling centre; and an indigenous people’s centre and other Beban Park facilities improvements including farmers’ market space, VIEX grounds and soccer changerooms.
“At some point we would like to say, ‘what would council like us to focus on?’ Because as you see, there’s a lot of facilities that are on that list and there’s definitely not the funding mechanisms to do a fraction of them, let alone all of them,” said Richard Harding, general manager of parks, recreation and culture.
Art Groot, director of facility and parks operations, said the city’s asset management is happening every day, and councillors are being asked for decision-making which would help formalize more “long-term, proactive and predicted” asset management.
Thorpe said the city needs to “fish or cut bait” on certain facilities and Coun. Ben Geselbracht said it’s important to make decisions sooner than later.
“If we wait for all these plans and so forth to line up, we will be waiting another two years before we get clearance to move forward on some of these things…” said Jake Rudolph, the city’s chief administrative officer. “We need to come to you with additional information so that you’ll be enabled to make hopefully some decisions around moving forward with some of these projects.”
He mentioned bringing further details and options back to council members at upcoming governance and priorities committee or finance and audit committee meetings. Councillors did not make any motions following Monday’s presentation.
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