Capital Budget Meeting City Council took an in-depth look at their Capital Budget for 2016.

Various Water and Wastewater projects were discussed as well as General Capital projects. One major discussion centred on the Lakeshore Drive Overpass, and Chair of Community Services Mark King asked whether it was necessary to keep that overpass.

He says “I can’t understand why we would spend $5-million on that bridge. It should be one level crossing just like Memorial Drive or (other areas) where the tracks run directly over the highway.” Staff replied that there is third party funding of $3-million already allocated to the project and there wasn’t support to change direction at this time.

Meantime, is $3.5-million enough money to repair the city’s potholes?

Councillor Derek Shogren doesn’t think so and he has asked City Staff to look at raising the funds in the 2016 Capital Budget to $4-million. He added “I’ll be asking every year for this to go up to $4-million. In a $20-million dollar budget I’m sure we can find $500,000 in other areas coming off other projects to get to that $40-million mark.”

Lastly, Heritage North Bay got some support from City Councillors during last nights (Tuesday) budget discussions. Mayor Al McDonald says they came forward a few weeks ago to request funding be available to repair a leak in the roof of the Discovery North Bay Museum.

McDonald says “We believe the cost is anywhere between $50,000 to $75,000, so what we’ve said as a council is we want to fix the roof, since we own it. We’ll just have to wait for a report from staff.”

There is $39-million worth of projects already going forward in the 2016 Capital Budget, up from the $34-million spent in 2015. This includes $26-million worth of general capital projects, with $13-million in water and wastewater projects.

McDonald says they are still on target to pass the budget within the first week of January.