Timing is everything when it comes to upcoming civic investments in the City of Trail.
A new arena scoreboard will be coming to the Trail Memorial Centre (TMC) after council approved the $50,000 expenditure in its 2016 capital plan deliberations on Monday.
Notably, the new unit will be strictly a timekeeper, unlike the current scoreboard which does have video capacity, but has been defunct for three years.
“The issue of a small market venue would be considered a luxury and was only installed in the first place because the city was able to secure a grant (Olympic Legacy Fund),” David Perehudoff, Trail’s chief administrative officer noted. “In retrospect when considering the quality and performance issues, the net results have been less than desirable and technology was not developed at the time of acquisition.”
Besides agreeing on a new scoreboard, council approved a further $115,000 in capital expenditures from this year’s $2.33 million general capital budget.
With so many big ticket projects currently underway, such as the $14 million Columbia River Skywalk, and $4 million allocated to making the new Riverfront Centre shovel ready, taxpayers may be wondering why council upped the capital budget another $239,500 two months ago.
It’s all part of a long-term vision, says the Trail mayor.
“The capital plan looks at the capital expenditure needs of the city for five years and beyond,” Mayor Mike Martin explained. “In the absence of allocating additional money and deferring projects, council was concerned they would have created a further infrastructure deficit in the context of funding capacity, ” he added. “And in this context, not only are projects getting completed, base funding has been increased that will provide the city considerable flexibility in future years.”
Prior to greenlighting 2016 capital expenditures, council debated a long list of potential projects as well as related costs and merits.
A “Council also considers costs in the context of approving projects that can be completed and provide enough financial capacity to address projects in a number of different operational areas throughout the city,” said Martin. “This, of course, was more challenging this year given some of the higher value capital projects the city is working on.”
Projects approved this week include: $16,500 to update closed circuit video equipment in the Trail RCMP office; $15,000 to replace facia board and install new bumper guards at Indian Eddy Wharf; $75,000 for land purchases, though details remain in-camera; and $8,500 for an engineering study to reconfigure the Trail Memorial Centre front entrance.
Those plans add to the pre-budget approval of $510,000 for the Victoria Street Bridge Lighting project, $150,000 for LED street lighting, and $322,000 for a TMC heating plant redesign.
A summary of the full capital plan is still under wraps, but will be revealed when council considers the Financial Plan Bylaw (budget) at the April 25 regular meeting.