Staff
Council has taken a first go at its 2017 capital budget and has green-lit some much-needed renovations at several town facilities.
The Memorial Sports Centre auditorium, which has seen plenty of use with wedding socials and other gatherings over the years, will get new flooring (at a cost of $14,000) while the bar area will be renovated ($7,000).
“If you’re going to rent the auditorium out, you’ve got to make sure you have something that looks good,” Mayor Roy Avis reasoned at a budget meeting yesterday evening.
The ’52 Canadians Arena also will get a waterline loop tie-in. This will address the problem of stagnant water sometimes coming through the taps in the arena auditorium.
Meanwhile, the meeting room at ’52 Canadians Arena, which gets very hot, will get proper windows that open.
The ladies’ sauna at the Sportsplex will be renovated, as well.
Renovations also will be done to the Public Works stores area and coffee break room, with landscaping and drainage repairs to be done at the Public Works yard.
Floor tiles will be removed and replaced at the main entrances of the Civic Centre while the roof of the Fort Frances Children’s Complex will be replaced.
Some other items staying in the capital budget include additional financial software, a folder/inserter machine for town bills, fibre optics to town facilities, a portable air monitor for the fire department, road and sidewalk reconstruction for a section of Nelson Street, a bylaw ticket device for issuing parking tickets, and two lawn tractors for the cemeteries department.
Meanwhile, a total of $545,650 in low-priority items were removed, leaving the capital budget sitting at $11.8 million.
Some low-priority items cut include soundproofing replacement for the pool wall, 20 tables and 100 chairs for the East End Hall, an airport snow blower, Civic Centre exterior painting and repairs, and net anchoring at the Ice For Kids Arena.
Cleaning and painting of the Portage Avenue underpass, as well as exterior renovations to the garage, lunchroom building, and storage building at the Fort Frances Cemetery, also were axed.
Other items deleted include 36 replacement streetlight poles along Scott Street, coin-operated door knobs for public washrooms, a heated north-end rink shack, waterfront dock repairs, and replacement of the Williams Avenue finger dock pier.
The reconstruction of Scott Street from Reid Avenue to Colonization Road East also was struck from the budget.
Capital budget items are paid for not through taxation but a combination of federal gas tax, federal and provincial grants, and various town reserve funds.
