As part of its first practical meeting on Thursday since electing the new board executive just days before, TNRD directors have approved the contracts to spend up to 520-thousand dollars to upgrade the Regional District headquarters in downtown Kamloops.
This, on top of awarding the contracts to spend around 290-thousand dollars to upgrade the TNRD offices in Mission Flats.
In justifying the contracts, CAO Scott Hildebrand says the downtown location doesn’t utilize its space well.
“Our library distribution process is housed on floor number 3,” noted Hildebrand. “We’re moving that to floor number 2 to create some more space on floors 3 and 4, just to redistribute the staff and some of the board rooms.”
Stock photo of the TNRD Boardroom. (Photo via Colton Davies)
Hildebrand says there will also be some upgrades to the technology the TNRD Board uses.
“As you see, you’ll see cords all over the place. It’s a pretty antiquated system,” argues Hildebrand. “The new technology coming to the TNRD Board Room includes new microphones, three built-in cameras for live video conferencing for the Regional District’s board meetings.”
He says the most important part of the upgrade is the creation of a stand-alone Emergency Operations Center in the downtown Kamloops location on the 3rd floor of the building.
“With all the fires and the floods and everything going on, we are usually in [the TNRD Board] room, which then displaces the Board. And it’s not set up in a way that an EOC would function in here properly.”
Roughly half — 412-thousand — of the over 800-thousand-dollar refurbishment is going to be coming from the TNRD’s COVID restart fund.
Approvals to spend this money were made by the previous TNRD board.
All 27 directors of the current board voted in favor of awarding the new contracts.
The refurbishments are expected to begin in December, with construction expected to last around 5 months.
