Despite some economic anxiety from a couple city councillors, Merrittonians will be making the final call on whether to go ahead with a $2.3 million expansion to the fire hall on Nicola Avenue.
Both councillors Mike Goetz and Dave Baker expressed support for the project in general — but said that the timing was wrong, given the closure of the Tolko’s Merritt mill in December.
Nevertheless, the motion to pursue an alternative approval process in order to borrow up to $2.3 million to pay for the fire hall expansion was passed at a budget meeting on March 7. At the meeting, Sheila Thiessen, director of finance for the City of Merritt, took councillors through a couple different scenarios for financing the project.
Without the option of paying for the expansion through grants (as there are little to no grants available for protective services), Thiessen explained that the city would likely have to borrow money upfront to pay for construction.
Anytime a municipality plans to incur debt for more than five years — as would be the case for the fire hall expansion — a city is required to put the project to a community referendum or alternate approval process, said Thiessen.
Unlike a referendum, in an alternate approval process only those who are against the project are invited to vote.
Fire Chief Dave Tomkinson made the case for a fire hall upgrade at a budget open house in February. (Cole Wagner/Herald).
“We would have to let the public know what the impact would be from borrowing, so there would be some open houses, some meetings and ads. If they objected to that proposed borrowing, they would come into the office and come sign a form,” said Thiessen.
Should the city collect “no” signatures totalling more than 10 per cent of the local electorate, the lending required to finance the fire hall expansion would not move forward. With an estimated 5,400 people eligible to cast a vote in the municipal elections in 2014, about 540 people would have to object for the bylaw permitting the lending to be defeated.
If the lending is approved, the city would finance its debt at a rate of $150,000 over 25 years or $168,000 over 20 years starting in 2018, according to Thiessen’s report to council. That rate would equate to approximately 2 per cent of the city’s budget this fiscal year.
Thiessen said the city would aim to get the alternate approval process done in the late summer or early fall, and would be aiming to break ground on construction in 2018.
With the one more budget meeting on the schedule for March 29, city councillors have yet to finalize the property tax rate for this year. Councillors will spent the final meeting going over a variety of “red-flagged” items from prior budget discussions, with the goal of keeping this property tax increase at under 2 per cent.
