Kamloops City Councillors have approved spending an additional $750,000 to replace the track at Hillside Stadium.

Parks and Civic Facilities Manager Jeff Putnam says the extra money is meant to offset the increase in costs to replace the existing track with a higher-grade Mondotrack surface.

“The current track surface, which was installed in 2006, is pretty much at the end of its lifespan, it’s served us very well as a community. Its more of a community recreation use, its not necessarily intended for international athletics events,” he said.

“A few years ago we replaced a similar surface in the indoor track with Mondotrack just to make sure we’re really viable for future events and we’re trying to do the same for the outdoor track.”

In Feb. 2021, City Council approved a budget of $2.18 million to replace the track, though Putnam in a report to council said they were only able to to confirm the supply-schedule and final project cost this spring.

It’s now expected to cost around $2.9 million to replace the track, though Putnam told city councillors Tuesday that city staff have done their best to try and reduce the scope of the project to bring down costs.

“We all know about supply chain issues and inflation and especially because this is a petroleum based product, its 84,000 square feet of it,” he said. “We’ve met several times with finance and procurement, really looking six ways to Sunday how we can make this work but there is not a lot we can do, our scope is really tight. We’re just focusing on replacing the track, cement repairs, and repainting the lines.”

“Since 2020, fertilizer in parks has gone up 107 per cent, paints that is line painting for sports fields has gone up 86 per cent. Plant materials 82 per cent, so you can see the rest of the numbers,” Putnam added.

“The actual 33 per cent budget increase [here] is very much in line what we’ve seen.”

Putnam also told council that postponing this project to a future year would create a number of potential risks.

“If the City is unable to complete the track replacement this year, the ability to reorder the Mondotrack product could not be guaranteed given the product’s scarcity.,” he wrote. “Postponing the project would also put the project at risk for further cost increases and the facility at risk for end-of-lifespan issues with the current surface.”

Work to replace the track is set to begin on June 12. It has an estimated completion date at the end of August.

Rivers FC will play the rest of their League1 BC home games at McArthur Island, while the Kamloops Broncos will begin the CJFL season with straight road games. Their first home game isn’t until Sept. 16, though Putnam tells RadioNL there are contingency plans in case the project is delayed.

This track replacement comes after new turf was installed at Hillside Stadium in the summer of 2020. The initial plan was replace both the turf and the track at the same time, though the track replacement was deferred due to uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.