As Chatham-Kent council prepares to reduce a proposed 5.96 per cent tax increase, one thing municipal administration stressed to the public is none of that is due to the Community Hub project.
The hub – which would see municipal operations from the Civic Centre, the Chatham branch of the library, and the museum move into the former Sears building – is outside of the operational budget.
“The budget proposal is 5.96 per cent. The downtown hub has nothing to do with the tax rate,” said Michael Duben, C-K’s CAO. “There is certainly misinformation out there.”
Gord Quinton, chief financial officer for the municipality, said C-K looks after 115 different buildings around the municipality. The Civic Centre is just one of them. In fact, it is one that has not had maintenance and upgrade funds applied to it in recent years, he said.
“We’re putting away money in our lifecycle reserves to maintain our buildings. We continue to put away money to maintain this building, even though council a few years ago made the recommendation to stop fixing this building because we were looking at other options. And more recently, we have the Sears building option. We have about $6 million that’s been put away for not maintaining this building.”
Edward Soldo, general manager of engineering and infrastructure services for the municipality, said the Community Hub should be looked at as an investment.
“If we do not spend that money and invest in that building, then we have to invest in this building and we have to invest in the library and we have to invest in the museum,” he said. “Right now, all three of those facilities are quite old so our maintenance and operating costs are quite high. But if we move to a new investment in the Community Hub, our operation and maintenance costs are going to be lower.”
Quinton stressed administration is just following council’s lead in terms of building maintenance.
“Council has still not made a decision (on the hub project). For us (administration), it’s business as usual.”
