As excitement swirled around many great things last year for the City of Winkler, the anticipated start of three big projects didn't happen as hoped. Mayor Henry Siemens says those projects will now be tendered in 2024.
The wastewater treatment plant is something that needs to get done. Work is being completed on the final drawings.
"Our hope had been that we would have that to tender already, and maybe even working. We now are led to believe that we're still several weeks away from that," said Siemens. "We have a water treatment plant expansion as well. Once we have both of those built, we will have enough water an wastewater infrastructure for a population of 25,000 people."
Those two projects will allow businesses the confidence to expand their operations knowing the City will be able to provide them with what they need, added Siemens. "It's going to give people the confidence to be able to move to our community and set up roots here."
Siemens is hopeful by the time Council is ready for its annual planning conference the third week of January, they will be set to send out the tender for the wastewater project. When the final numbers come in, Council is hoping for a pleasant surprise with estimates returning closer to historical averages, allowing for better planning.
"And then the other exciting thing we had, of course, was the announcement for the Centennial Arena and the redo there."
Once the budgets for those two projects are finalized, Siemens said they will then proceed with the centennial arena project.
As exciting as these projects are, getting to the final budgets is a challenging process, added Siemens.
"As happens with any renovation project, as soon as you open it up, you find unexpected things, and very quickly your budget changes. So we're looking to try to nail down a final number on that to still build a facility that the City of Winkler and others in the area are going to like. We're challenged by budgets on each of those."
Over the last several years, Siemens said there have been huge inflationary challenges on every project Council put forward.
"And quite often despite the best work we've been able to do, our tender numbers come in higher than our expected number. And as challenging as that is, when we do a project for 1/2 a million or $1,000,000 if it comes in 10% over budget, it's frustrating. But we're able to make that work. But when we look at now the wastewater treatment plant, it's the largest project that the City of Winkler has ever done by a factor of two. Our initial numbers look at above $55 million for that project. When we tender it and it if it were to come back 10% over budget, that would be a real struggle."
With multiple projects on the books for the City in 2024, Siemens says it was good news to learn the Province has ended the freeze on its municipal basket funding. that also means the police funding freeze that's been in place since 2016 will be lifted as well.
"Previously, the Province had supported some of those things, and they weren't at the same level, which has made it much harder for us to balance our budget. We don't yet know what those numbers are going to look like. We don't know at what level the Province will fund both of those services, but we've had some really good meetings initially with Wab Kinew and members of his cabinet that tell us they recognize they need to invest into growing communities, to generate the taxes that they need to do some of the things that they want to do as well. We're optimistic about that. We're hopeful that that is the case, and that we'll be able to move forward in a true partnership."
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