Six draft Asset Management plans that tackle levels of service were received and approved at Quinte West City Council’s meeting on Wednesday.
These plans include the following:
- Transportation Asset Management Plan 2025
- Fleet Asset Management Plan 2025
- Outdoor Parks and Recreation Asset Management Plan 2025
- Facilities Asset Management Plan 2025
- Stormwater Asset Management Plan 2025
- Water, Wastewater Asset Management Plan 2025
Presenting to council, Manager of Data and Asset Management Riley Wolters outlined that the City of Quinte West has a proposed Asset Management Plan spend of $47.6 million per year, but has yearly funding of only $29.4 million per year, meaning there is an infrastructure deficit of $18.2 million accumulating each year the plan is underfunded.
An asset management working group was created that included five councillors and seven city staff members who worked to find cost saving strategies to reduce the infrastructure spending deficit.
Three recommendations were brought forward, the first to increase road prevention spending (crack sealing, micro-surfacing) which would, in the long term, save money, reduce the target quality of the city’s roads, and reduce parks and recreation asset spending.
Recommendations were decided based on data from a public survey with over 200 responses focusing on understanding public priorities and willingness to spend.
The spending changes are broken down as follows:
- Increased road prevention (-$500k)
- Reduced arterial road conditions (-$1.4 million)
- Reduced local road conditions (-$3.4 million)
- Reduced surface treated conditions (-$200k)
- Reduced playground conditions (-$82k)
- Reduced sportsfields conditions (-$149k)
- Reduced trail conditions (-$69k)
- Updated fire fleet lifespans (-$244k)
The changes led to the infrastructure deficit being reduced by about $6.0 million from $18.2 million to $12.2 million per year.
The working group determined that closing the infrastructure deficit by the end of the next term of council was a realistic goal, and that could be achieved by reducing the capital levy from the 4% proposed previously to 3% for the next four years, before going down to 2% after that.
Councillor Don Kuntze stated that the recommendations will be brought back into the budget process beginning in December 2025.
