The North Cariboo Joint Planning Committee is asking staff to figure out how to squeeze two major infrastructure projects into 6 million dollars.
Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson says they basically have two shovel ready projects…one for more than 15 million dollars to upgrade the pool at the Rec Centre and another to build a gymnastics facility onto the soccer complex and take the soccer complete to a full field for more than 8 million dollars.
The problem is the fund to which they want to apply, the Strategic Initiatives Fund, caps out at 6 million dollars and requires that the funds for the projects that go over that amount are also in place…
“So to cut to the chase what joint planning has given staff direction, and we’ve got the luxury of time, is go back and look at both the gymnastics-Quesnel youth soccer and the pool, we’re allowed to submit two projects to this fund, so to come back to us and say what do six million dollar discrete projects look like for these two facilities.”
Simpson says anything over 6 million dollars would mean they would have to go to referendum or find the money elsewhere.
On the pool project, he says they were presented with it in phases.
Simpson says they hope to make some decisions at the next Joint Planning meeting in May.
A funding application would have to be in by June 30th.