Recommendation to pull plug on Pefferlaw Ice Pad roof nixed by council

YorkRegion.com
Aug. 15, 2017
Heidi Riedner

A roof structure for the Pefferlaw Ice Pad got a bit of a political Hail Mary after council rejected a staff recommendation to pull the plug on the project earlier this month.

Two years after the project and federal grant funding of $315,000 was approved, staff recommended cancelling the project after construction bids came in almost double the approved budget.

Initial estimates, the cost of inflation and the expanded scope of the project made the project “no longer feasible for completion” within the approved budget, according to the staff report tabled Aug. 9.

The original 100-by-200-foot fabric footprint of the structure the Canada 150 grant was based on changed to steel and expanded by 20 per cent in order to include a picnic shelter pad and retrofitted mechanical building.

Additional costs not accounted for included bringing the mechanical building up to fire code and expanding the 81,000-litre water tanks required by the Ontario building code to 120,000 litres, at the request of the fire department, in order to help fight fires at neighbouring properties such as the library, Lions Hall and seniors residence.

“Since there are no existing on-site sources of water for firefighting for any of these facilities it is in the best interest of the town to appropriately size the tanks with the bigger picture in mind,” the report states.

“Show me the money to make it happen,” Mayor Margaret Quirk told staff, however, despite numerous projects requiring additional monies being deferred to 2018 budget discussions during the past few months.

Ward 2 Coun. Dan Fellini agreed the commitment made to Pefferlaw residents should be kept.

“It is the right thing to do and we have to do it,” he said.

As a result, the project’s current procurement process was cancelled and authority delegated to the chief administrative officer to award the contract.

Staff will report back with funding options.

The approved total budget, including consultants, geotechnical analysis and roof construction is $786,225 in 2015 dollars, when the project was approved.

The lowest quote received to date results in a budget shortfall of $267,175.

The town’s landscape architectural planner, Ken McAlpine, said the federal grant, which comes with a March 2018 deadline for completion of the project, should not be in jeopardy, with construction completion estimated for January 2018 "at the latest."