Road projects becoming city’s cash cow

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

For the past few years, councillors have been hitting the budget books a few months earlier than their surrounding municipal counterparts.

Their reasoning? The early bird gets the worm. The worm in this case being a sweet deal when it comes to generally costly construction projects. However, that strategy does not seem to be paying off in 2016.

According to Councillor John Aker, it is a trend that councillors and staff have both been noticing in recent months.

“Our contracts are coming in higher than budget for road contracts,” he said at the most recent meeting of the development services committee.

The same was said by Gary Carroll, the city’s director of engineering services.

“A lot of the prices are significantly up,” he said.

In total, the city’s approved capital projects for this year have seen nearly $5 million approved for roads projects, which includes reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts, along with another $1.3 million for sidewalk work.

A large chunk of the work, which include projects along Park Road, Hibbert, Trick and Cadillac Avenue, along with Cubert and Hortop Street, were awarded to Hard-Co Construction. The final price tag came in 17 per cent higher than budgeted, or nearly $400,000.

Also awarded to Hard-Co was reconstruction work along Thornton Road North from Taunton to Conlin, which came in $261,000 higher than expected.

Due to these increased costs, city staff will need to cut back on some of the other approved projects slated for 2016. While no details were offered as to which projects may get the axe, due to savings in some other work, the hope is that reductions will not be significant.

“At the very least, the cutback will be quite minimal,” Carroll says.

The city was able to find some savings in pavement preservation projects that came in six per cent lower than expected and crack sealing contracts that came in two per cent lower.

However, it was not enough for councillors to forget the higher than expected price tags on the other projects, which had Councillor Doug Sanders questioning how effective the early budgeting strategy is in the long run.

According to Carroll, there are many factors that can impact the price, but the strategy is generally a good one.

“Depending again on when the projects are tendered and the scale of the work, we typically will get good prices,” he said.

However, in recent years, Carroll says projects have been “skewed” slightly, pointing to the demand from the expansion of Highway 407 putting pressure on local suppliers. Carroll said that at times it has been hard to even find concrete or asphalt because of the “goliath like” numbers required by the toll highway.

And while many early tenders are coming in higher than expected, many approved projects have yet to even make it to that stage.

The King Street streetscape pilot project, which includes pedestrian walkways, landscaping and other sidewalk and road improvements, is now slated for spring of 2017. During budget time, councillors voted to approve the funds from reserves for 2016, despite staff originally having already deferred the work. A tender has yet to be released for the project.

Maintenance work for Wilson Road South and Townline Road north of Columbus, a large collection of work under the city’s new Active Transportation Master Plan and other road work projects along Carswell Avenue, Herbert Street and Eastwood Avenue have all yet to be tendered.