THUNDER BAY – A city program that’s been taking extra dollars from ratepayers with the promise of addressing infrastructure appears to be straying from its original objective.
That has Northwood Coun. Shelby Ch'ng concerned.
The genesis of the enhanced infrastructure renewal program came in 2011 as a way to tackle the city's infrastructure deficit, now pegged at around $17 million a year.
The plan was to take an extra couple of million taxpayer dollars annually and put it into the program and spend it on core infrastructure.
Projections from 2013 pegged spending through the program at about $14 million this year. In 2013 it was also decided that the funding should only be used for pavement, road networks, bridges and culverts, streetlights, storm sewers, parks and facilities.
This year, EIRP spending will be around $7.9 million and it's proposed that $2 million of that be used to partly fund the Thunder Bay Police Service and Thunder Bay Fire Rescue's new radio renewal plan.
"When things like police radios come out of the EIRP it sets off alarm bells to me," Ch'ng said. "EIRP has already gone down so much.
"I get police radios are a priority, fire radios are a priority but do we have to suffer in our infrastructure? I don't think we have to."
Several times throughout this year's budget process, councilllors have been told that the EIRP is just a name and that it's all just capital spending coming from tax revenue.
If council doesn't want to use the program to fund radio equipment, administration has suggested it can just take another capital project that fits the program's description and switch the radios out.
"It is no different than capital out of revenue," city manager Norm Gale said Wednesday night.
"What you put in there, how you move it around becomes rather semantic.”
Ch'ng said it's upsetting to hear that the program is considered optics given that she campaigned on getting infrastructure problems in her Northwood ward addressed.
"What am I supposed to tell my citizens?" she said.
When it was introduced, councilllors pointed to an Ipsos Reid survey showing that the public was comfortable paying more tax for increased infrastructure as proof the program would be sound fiscal policy.
In 2014 for example, then budget chair Coun. Mark Bentz pointed out that the money was an extra hike to taxpayers to address the city's infrastructure problems when discussing that year's proposed budget increase.
"The proposed budget includes an additional $2.5 million related to the enhanced infrastructure renewal program. When you exclude the extra renewal, it really represents a 1.7 per cent overall increase to maintain city operations and services,” he said.
Overall, net capital spending in this year's proposed budget is down around 2.6 per cent from last year.
