Sandman Centre is one of 190 civic facilities maintained by the City of Kamloops. (File Photo)

By Victor Kaisar

Maintenance Budget Increase

Kamloops poised to more than double civic facilities maintenance budget

Nov 28, 2024 | 2:19 PM

KAMLOOPS — A plan to increase the maintenance budget for civic facilities in Kamloops by $2 million will be going before council for final approval in the near future, after it was previously rejected.

Darren Crundwell, the city’s strategic capital integration manager, says if approved, the budget will more than double from the current $1.5 million to $3.5 million

“What we’re doing is drawing on it to put more maintenance dollars into our facilities,” Crundwell said, noting the additional money will come from an existing asset management reserve created by the previous council in 2019.

“It is not for upgrades and improvements. It is pure maintenance dollars — so replacing windows, painting, HVAC units, roofing… things like that.”

The City of Kamloops is responsible for 190 civic facilities, which Crundwell says have an approximate replacement value of $1.5 billion. He also said a recently completed Civic Facilities Master Plan has identified $35.4 million worth of upgrades at those facilities over the next 10 years.

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“We did an independent audit and inspection on every facility. They’re in good shape but like everything, they’re getting toward the end of their lives and they require a bit more maintenance,” Crundwell said. “That’s all this money is for.”

“When you look at the total funding, $3.5 million per year on an asset value of $1.5 billion, it’s less than 0.5 per cent a year. The industry standard recommendation is about 4 per cent per year.”

The city’s Committee of the Whole initially rejected the idea last month, but then revisited it earlier this month.

Request for new staff members going to supplemental budget

A secondary request to hire two additional staff members — a new facilities architect and a new GIS specialist — to better manage civic facilities will be going before council for approval as part of the supplementary budget process.

“It’ll be someone with a specialty looking after asset plans, growth and development, design approvals, all of that for our facilities,” Crundwell said when asked why the city was looking to hire a facilities architect. “We do that within our operations and we do use a lot of consultants as we don’t have in-house expertise like we do with other assets.”

“[The GIS Specialist] will be modelling buildings and helping us grow and improve our asset management efforts on our facilities,” Crundwell added.

Asked what the plan is if council does not approve the new positions owing to the projected tax increase of nearly 10 per cent, Crundwell said it be status quo in the facilities department.

“We get there are lots of different ask but we’ll still get the work done, it’ll still be in the form of consultants or external help,” Crundwell said.

“We are still doing these things but now that we’re got forward with a formal ask, we will look at how much we’re spending on consultants and external help and build the business case to hire internally.”