By Cheryl Jahn

Capital Budget approved

Feb 3, 2023 | 4:15 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The capital budget covers all the physical infrastructure the City owns, from the swimming pools to ice hockey arenas to the Civic Centre.

“While we have we, of course, on a lot of assets, over three three billion dollars would be the replacement value or assets,’ explains Kris Dalio, Director of Finance. “So as they get older, we, of course, have to reinvest with them to make sure that they’re still able to provide the service five years from now as they do now.”

In fact, the City is looking at $51.3 million in capital spending this year, the Lion’s Share of which is reinvestment, which is defined as monies to renew, replace or maintain an asset. The capital budget is broken down into two categories: those projects that are funded either this year or in the four years following. Then there is the unfunded list, defined as projects that the City would LIKE to have done, but simply can’t afford to do. However, the City’s Director of Finance noted there was an alarming trend even with the funded projects in the funded list.

“We’ve been sort of filling the gap with some one-time granting from the senior government. So we had the northern capital planning grant and occasionally we would get nicely surprised with the doubling of the gas tax funds for a year. But we have no indication that either of those are going to continue to happen every year. So right now for the future, I can’t see a funding source for those unless we either reinvest in our general Infrastructure Reinvestment fund levy or we use debt to borrow for that.”

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However, he says using debt to fund ongoing maintenance is not prudent economics. But roadworks, water and sewer are also part of the equation. But, the problem is that we could fit other BC municipalities within the City of Prince George boundaries.

“This specific a problem that I identified during the campaign,” explains Mayor Simon Yu. ‘I have said the City of Prince George, we we can put a Victoria, Saanich and Nanaimo, all two three together in our boundary still got room to spare. And yet the population of these three cities combined is multiple times of Prince George’s population. So how do we support such infrastructure on such a large footprint?”

A reserve fund called the General Infrastructure Reinvestment Fund was created in 2013, knowing full well there will be some serious bills coming in. During budget discussions, Council identified projects they would like to see pulled from the unfunded list, but …

“It’s always easier when it’s not budget time to say, Yes, we want these things, we want these services. And then, you know, when the budget comes around and say, ‘Okay, this is what it costs to do all these things, people are like, Well, we want to try and reduce the taxes.’ But we said yes all the way up until now. And so that’s the balance that I think that’s hard to strike.”

However, all that was drawn from the unfunded list was $25,000 to idenitify potential off-leash dog parks.