Kamloops City Councillors have approved a plan to spend $750,000 to create a new civic facilities master plan.
Capital Projects Manager Darren Crundwell says the City of Kamloops is responsible for 349 buildings including all utility buildings, lift stations and other similar facilities. He told council that the replacement value is estimated to be around a billion dollars.
“Our buildings are well maintained but really long term capital and maintenance of new buildings is done on a more reactionary basis,” he said. “One of the other issues that we have, like most municipalities, a lot of our infrastructure was built at the same time and we have no single source of truth like other assets.”
“[The idea is for] staff to create a facilities master plan similar to our water master plan, our sewer master plan, transportation master plan and drainage master plans as an example. We also want to look to start treating these assets like a critical network like our water, sewer and storm assets.”
The $750,000 price tag had Councillor Arjun Singh question how it could cost that much money to create a plan.
Crundwell noted about half of the money will go toward conducting building assessments, with a priority on major assets.
“A lot of that is building that data and then the other is the plans and what comes out of that,” he said. “I guess calling it a plan maybe doesn’t do it as much justice. It will be a major decision-making tool.”
“It would inform planning, funding decisions, operations strategies, guide decisions for future growth, help with maintenance planning including changing to maintenance practices to meet service levels and improve performance of our building assets. It will also create a database which will help us manage all building assets.”
The goal is to update the civic facilities plan – which Crundwell called a “living document” – every two to three years, similar to what is done with the City’s water, sewer and transportation master plans.
“The number does look big but it is getting started that is the the biggest part of that,” he said.
Work on the plan is expected to start in September or October of this year, with it slated to go before council for approval at the end of 2024.
Crundwell says the city will use money from the asset management reserve fund should an application for grant funding from the UBCM’s Canada Community-Building Fund be unsuccessful.
