'Ticking time bomb'

Coun. Mark Bentz calls the city’s annual $15 million infrastructure deficit a “ticking time bomb.”

Bentz, speaking to Thunder Bay’s long-term financial plan presented by senior city administration officials, on Tuesday said he’s worried chronic under-spending will put the city in a hole it will never be able to climb out from.

Echoing comments made by Neebing Coun. Linda Rydholm when the preliminary budget was released last week, the Northwood representative said he’s not sure he’s willing to continue to ignore what he sees as a growing problem.

“Every year we’re under-spending on infrastructure that’s eventually going to fail,” Bentz said. “It’s going to catch up.”

His argument didn’t meet with strong opposition from city manager Tim Commisso.

Commisso said council is going to have to consider incrementally increasing funding, while finding savings to pay for it to meet the additional $7 million the city should be spending each year to repair the city’s roads.

“If you wanted to do that over three years, you’re looking at (increases) somewhere in the range of $2.5 million a year,” Commisso said. “To do the work over a five-year time period I think is a reasonable time frame ... But that would be quite frankly remarkable to close a gap like that.”

Most cities in Canada face similar holes, but while most are on the road to recovery, they’re essentially looking at a 10-year time frame.

According to city financial manager Carol Busch, the $15 million shortfall is comprised of $4 million for road rehabilitation, $3 million for road network improvements, $1.8 million for storm sewers, $700,000 for bridges, $3.3 million for facilities and $2 million for things like pools and parks.

“Fifteen-million dollars, I agree, it’s a lot and over the next three to four years we should try to close that gap,” Commisso said.

Bentz bristled at the delay.

“Closing it is not really the solution,” he said. “I just don’t want to create a problem that we can never solve.”

Westfort Coun. Joe Virdiramo wondered if the city and/or the private sector have the capacity to do the work in such a short timeframe, should council find the money to speed up the work and reduce the spending gap.

The answer, in a nutshell, is yes, said Transportation and Works manager Darrell Matson.

“It could be accomplished,” Matson said. “If we want to do $10-million of work of road rehabilitation, there would be contractors to do the work.”

However, he reminded council that it could mean increased costs due to supply and demand.