A referendum to borrow money to renovate the Quesnel RCMP Detachment has been put on hold for now.
City Council unanimously decided at Tuesday (May 26) night’s meeting not to hold the vote during the upcoming municipal elections.
While most at the table were in favour of getting the money for the project, most, including Councillor Scott Elliott, felt there was just too much of a time crunch.
“It’s a very important project, and I don’t think there is enough time for staff to get the messaging out to the community. Another aspect is that there’s going to be a new Council coming up in October, so I think that they should be involved in the decisions and the timing of this. So I think we should concentrate on the election and staff putting their time and effort into that, and then get a lot of messaging out, townhalls, whatever we have to do to get the right information out to people.”
Councillor Mitch Vik also felt that it was necessary to wait.
“Ultimately this is Council’s direction, we asked for this proposal and we want it to succeed, and we have to put our best foot forward to educate our constituents on this project, and if there’s any rush whatsoever I believe it threatens that goal. Additionally we are in the middle of trade negotiations with our neighbours down south and there is a certain amount of anxiety and we’re all aware that our major industrial component to our budget, that contributes to our budget. They’re very interested in how things go down south and I’d feel more comfortable if that came to some kind of resolution so we had some more certainty in the near future. I really believe, having toured the facility, this facility needs to be upgraded. It’s in very poor shape, it’s not organized effectively, we need to do something. We need to engage with our detachment to make sure we do take this project seriously and it needs to be on our radar in the near future.”
Councillor Laurey-Anne Roodenburg was concerned that waiting could hurt voter turnout for a referendum.
“When you have a referendum outside of an election and it’s stated in the cons here is how do you get the public engaged ? So you end up with a small group of people who are dead set about having their taxes increased again and they’re going to get their people out there and vote ‘no’, and so how do we make sure this referendum, if it’s held separately, gets the entire voice of the community out voting. And that has a lot to do with communication and the timing of the vote.”
Mayor Ron Paull talked about ‘optics’
“If we did decide to push forward with a referendum in conjunction with the upcoming local government elections, there may be some optics out there that we’re trying to push this through before an election and we’ve heard that before on other projects here in Quesnel. And also a referendum in conjunction with the regular election I believe would be a distracting election issue, or it could develop into that. I also think we at the city need sufficient time to effectively sell the proposal to the electors.”
Councillor Martin Runge initially wanted to move forward with the vote.
“I’m really scared of pushing this off. Another Council may be dealing with it anyway, no matter which way we look at it. I think we should get the ball rolling, I think if we have townhalls and the ability to talk to the public, I don’t think it’s going to get any better by pushing it out. I’m actually for pushing this forward sooner rather than later because I think if we move it forward. I just see the costs ballooning, so I’m actually for going forward faster knowing that we have to do it, it’s no something that we don’t do or can’t do, so I’m going to ask Council for doing this sooner.”
City Manager Joel McKay felt that they may want to address the issue holistically with other projects that the city will need to find a way to pay for.
He talked about a lack of parking at the RCMP Detachment which would be separate from the renovations, as well as water treatment and methane treatment at the landfill.
“I would not want to recommend to any Council that we deal with each of these items in isolation because they’re all going to require probably some portion of borrowing unless the federal government grant ferry suddenly shows up. But the reality of the fiscal situation federally and provincially from a stat perspective is that is not as likely. So if you don’t plan these things out comprehensively and get an indication from Council what are the priorities, you could find yourself in a situation where if you address these on a one off basis you’re borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, and then in addition to your annual tax increases just to deal with inflationary costs that we have as a city for our operations and basic services and other capital we have to do, you’re then borrowing on to it and it starts to layer.”
In the end though, no one was opposed to holding the vote after a new Council is voted in.
The cost to renovate the building, according to the architectures at the meeting, is estimated at $19,924,830.
The city’s share would be 58%, with the BC RCMP picking up the tab for the other 42%.
