Editor: Our citizen’s group is requesting council’s support of a notice of motion that will serve to ensure Chatham-Kent’s current services can be sustained.
On Oct. 21, council adopted its asset management plan overview document. Under provincial legislation the municipality is required to identify and address its stewardship costs for delivering services to the public.
Key takeaways from the report include:
- Adopting a full lifecycle approach is critical to ensure C-K considers the entire lifecycle cost when it acquires assets. Often, assets are acquired without understanding the long-term and cumulative costs of ownership that it will place on future generations.
- Once C-K acquires an asset, the municipality must fund the remaining lifecycle costs, such as operations, maintenance and likely inevitable renewal. These other lifecycle costs are far more significant than the initial construction or purchase cost and are often multigenerational.
- Since lifecycle costs are spread across multiple decades, Chatham-Kent must approach its asset planning with a long-term view to ensure it effectively manages the assets and assists in making informed choices.
- Currently, the 10-year funding gap for the non-core assets is $407,150,000. Non-core assets include such categories as police, fire, ambulance, facilities, libraries, public health, Riverview Gardens, social housing, transit, recreation and waste service.
- This amount will only be compounded further once the core assets funding gap is completed. Core assets include roads, bridges, culverts, water systems, wastewater and stormwater. Core assets account for nearly 90 per cent of C-K’s overall replacement costs.
Therefore, one can expect that the total funding shortfall to sustain our current services, both core and non-core, will be in the $4 billion range. Over the 10-year planning horizon, that’s a $400-million-per-year shortfall. This translates to significant tax increases or significant cuts in services.
In that same Oct. 21 meeting, council agreed to advance the Community Hub project another $2.2 million. This HUB project will increase the size of the current footprint of the Civic Centre, Chatham library and museum by 52 per cent. The additional footprint is a new asset for C-K, equivalent to almost two new Chatham libraries, that was not included in the AMP report, nor were the lifecycle costs identified.
Our citizenry is very concerned that we are missing the big picture. We have spent so much time being singularly focused on a hub project that consists of three assets, that we have missed the clear message from the report that the basic services that we currently enjoy across C-K are under attack and cannot be sustained.
We are requesting immediate action to address this issue, and to cease all unnecessary expenses until a robust financial plan is in place that ensures current services can be sustained.
We want a notice of motion that states that administration present a high-level strategic plan to council on how Chatham-Kent will meet the obligations of maintaining services over the next 10 years and eliminate the gap in funding that exists.
The motion should also have administration present a side-by-side comparison of the lifecycle costs of the Chatham hub proposal versus the current level of services provided to the municipality, including renewal, operations, maintenance and staff. It should include the current hub design; the library, museum and Civic Centre staying put with council chambers staying put; and the library, museum and Civic Centre remaining where they are, but with council chambers moved to the first floor.
Furthermore, have administration present a side by side comparison of the estimated lifecycle costs required for the current Chatham Fire Station #1 versus a new firehall facility.
John Cryderman
Chatham
