PRINCE GEORGE – Plenty of questions to staff from Council around cost overruns on the new pool project.
In December of 2020, the primer-coated structural steel arrived for the project, but by early 2021, the primer had begun to fail. It had to be sent to a fabrication plant to be fixed.
The cost to do that remediation was $1 million.
Next, excavation of the site to dig for the pool tanks resulted in the unexpected discovery of pipes in the ground. It was determined the soil would need to be replaced with engineered soil. with engineering fill.
The cost? $553,000.
Council learned the City is attempting to “recover” some of the million dollars from the contractor. If successful, any money from that would go back to the project.
But there many questions from Council around the unexpected discovery of the pipes.
“Didn’t we do any pre-work?,” enquired Councillor Cori Ramsay, to which the City replied there had been a survey, but there are always surprises.
In response to that, several Councillors suggested that any further development in the downtown have a greater contingency fund for those very surprises.
The $36.25 million dollar capital includes $25.5 million in Municipal Finance Authority borrowed funds, $10 million in federal funding and $750,000 from the Regional District of Fraser Fort George.
