With prosperity comes higher general costs and that is something starting to be realized as the City of Yorkton trys to keep pace with its normal maintenance program in terms of city infrastructure.
It has been well-documented that municipal infrastructure is an area municipalities, including the City of Yorkton are having a difficult time keeping pace with in terms of renewal. In Yorkton Councils have made efforts to increase spending in the area in recent years, although the impact is one most of us will not live long enough to appreciate. The City may have cut the time it will take to replace every sidewalk in the city, but when the timeframe is still counted in decades it stands to reason when you buy a house you may never see new sidewalk laid on your street.
And now the situations stand to get worse because the costs of sidewalks, street paving, and other infrastructure are on their way up. The push seems to simply be the prosperity we are experiencing in Saskatchewan.
With a stronger demand for workers labour costs rise, as have inputs ranging from fuel to utilities, and that means when a municipality offers a tender the prices are going to be higher.
The City of Yorkton certainly saw that in terms of the tender for its annual sidewalk program.
"Only one bid was submitted for this program. This was from Mid-West Concrete & Paving Stone Ltd. for $109,565 without GST. The budget for the 2011 concrete program is $65,000," City Engineer Moshiur Rahman told a recent meeting of Yorkton Council.
To bring the costs into line with the budgeted amount work on Argyle Street was deferred until 2012, which of course only slows the renewal program and extends the years it will take to replace the entire sidewalk system.
The sidewalk tender also serves to show another symptom of prosperity beginning to show itself.
Only one tender was received.
Yorkton Council made a big deal out of completing the 2011 budget before Christmas 2010, suggesting it would help speed the tender process and that would lead to more bids, and lower costs, because it would beat the normal spring time rush to find contractors. That has not seemed to prove out based on single bids for sidewalk and paving tenders, which are annually significant contracts in the city.
Moving forward it is rather obvious less work will be carried out even as the City continues its current budget levels. In other words there will be renewal slippage unless the City spends more and that will only be possible with tax increases, something no one is looking forward too.
