By Liam Oliver Neilson
Local Journalism Initiative
Reporter
lneilson@fortfrances.com
A plan to build a traffic roundabout connecting Central Avenue with Second and Fourth Streets is back on the table after Fort Frances Town Council decided Monday to go ahead with the controversial intersection revamp, but voted against giving the design work to the only engineering firm that placed a bid.
The future of the busy intersection has been hotly debated in council since October 2024. On April 13, a motion to award KGS Group of Winnipeg a contract for the design work for converting the intersection into a roundabout was defeated, essentially signalling that the roundabout plan was dead.
However, the defeat of that motion left few options to move forward, which has forced council to reconsider a roundabout, especially given that there is some time pressure to complete the project—town officials have said the signal lights at the intersection are on borrowed time, and their failure could cause even more costly repairs.
“If nothing happens tonight, we’re going to the next council to bring forward a tender for the roundabout, specifically with this company, and we’re just kicking the it down the road, so we would like a clean slate,” Chief Administrative Officer Marcel Michaels said to council. “I know it’s challenging, because you want to vote on whether you want the roundabout or not, but that question has already been done.”
In its April 13 vote, council voted against accepting the roundabout engineering plan from KGS Group due mainly to objections over ballooning costs. Initial estimates had pegged the cost of the entire project at between $1 and $2 million, but the KGS Group feasibility study revised that to about $4.7 million.
Councillors were also concerned about the cost of the KGS Group bid to complete the engineering plan, which came in $10,648 or about 5.3 per cent above the town’s $200,000 budget for this portion of the work.
Now, Infrastructure and Growth Manager Travis Rob said he will have to go back to the provincial funder, Connecting Links, to ask them to hold the money earmarked for the project.
“I’ve got to go to our funder and see if they will hold the funding for us, because there’s the risk that we lose our funding and we’re right back at square one,” Rob told The Times. “There’s no reason for us not to have awarded it—okay, yes, it was over budget—but given our past practice, when we are met with an overbudget type of project, it’s not really enough over budget to go back to KGS and say, ‘Yeah, over budget, project is dead.’ Because again, past practice would indicate that we have awarded contracts for way more than 5.3 per cent over.”
Renegotiating prices with the firm is not an option, as Rob said KGS Group had already lowered their initial bid of $256,000 to $210,648 to be more in line with the town’s allotted funds for the work. “I can’t reduce the scope any further,” he said.
The price for this design work is very unlikely to get any better, whether with KGS Group or a potential different bidder in the future, should the work go back up for tender.
“Basically, KGS holds ownership of the project, that is really the best way of putting it,” Rob said.
“We’re kicking it down the road to the next council. KGS will still hold first rate on the project. However, the period of time where they’re bound to hold their price will have expired. So, they’ll have the first rate of the project, plus be able to come back with an updated price based on cost-of-living changes, depending on how long this takes. The reality of it is that even if we give up that first rate, the next time we tender this, it’s going to be more money. That’s just how the world works.”
First rate, in this context, refers to KGS Group’s partial ownership of the design work. This firm drafted plans and conducted a comprehensive price breakdown when placing their bid. This is something the town will need to consider moving forward.
“They may have claim for costs associated with preparing their proposal, loss of profits,” Rob said.
Regardless of who moves ahead with this work, it’s now reaching a crucial stage where it needs to be dealt with as soon as possible.
“The issue lives in the controller of the traffic signals, it was put in in the early ‘90s, think of it as a computer that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Rob said. “They’re extremely robust, absolutely they are, but they will only last for so long.”
“All of our old controllers, which is a little less than half now, are all the same age. We’re starting to see them not just threaten to fail but actually fail. So Central Avenue is one that keeps me up at night because the implications of it failing are huge, and it’s so old that replacement parts don’t exist. It’s not a matter of going and hunting them out. They absolutely don’t exist.”
“Something needs to be done. Whether it’s a roundabout or something else, something needs to be done.”
Adding urgency to the issue is that council is at risk of going into a “lame duck” period ahead of the October municipal election, in which spending of more than $50,000 cannot be voted upon. This happens when fewer than 75 per cent of the current council members are confirmed to return for another term after nominations are ratified on Aug. 24. If the issue is not resolved by the nomination deadline and a lame duck council is triggered, it will be further pushed until after the elections.
Fort Frances Times
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