Monthly Archives: June 2008

RM passes PCU with opposition

Posted from the Daily Graphic June 28 2008

It was a packed house at the June 24 Rural Municipality of Portage la Prairie council meeting, as more than 30 residents came to watch councillors vote on whether to go to tender on the PCU multiplex at the fair grounds on Island Park.

The majority of the crowd were gathered to oppose going to tender, but were told they were not allowed to address council during the vote.

“There were obviously people (there) who were not in favour of the process,” said Reeve Toby Trimble after the vote. “But we’ve heard the concerns about our analysis before, and we took them into our consideration and went ahead with our decision.”

The standing-room-only crowd watched quietly, with only a couple of minor outbursts, while councillors listened to Guenter Schaub, project manager for the multiplex and principal structural engineer at Tower Engineering, discuss the tendering process prior to the vote.

The tenders, he explained, would come out in three or four separate groups over the next six to eight weeks, meaning some of the tenders would still be coming back while construction got underway in August of this year.

“Obviously, we’re fighting a construction season … and we need to get mobilized and be prepared to go,” he said. “So there are some components that we will tender ahead of time so we can get a jump on it,” he said.

That plan did not sit well with Ward 3 Coun. Terry Simpson, who said he was worried the project would get going and one of the tenders would come back over budget. Simpson added he was concerned if that happened, council would be forced to either go back to ratepayers for more funding, or have a half-finished sports facility.

“It was the way that the tender is going to take place, that’s what has really got me upset,” said Simpson. “If it comes in way above the $37 million, I’m sure they’ll come back and see if they can get more money out of the RM and the city.”

Simpson likened the situation to someone asking the bank for a loan to do construction, without knowing exactly how much the project would cost.

“If I’m going to a bank as an individual to build a brand new hotel, they would like to know the plans, and what it’s going to cost,” he said. “So they can tell you whether it’s feasible to be built under the circumstances.”

When it came time to vote, Simpson, along with Ward 7 Coun. William Alford, went against their fellow councilmen and opposed going to tender on the project. Ward 5 councillor, Arnold Verwey was absent from council and the vote, making the final tally five to two in favour of going to tender.

“I know I’m going to be in trouble with some of (the councillors), some of them don’t like how I voted,” said Simpson about his decision. “But this is my opinion, and I’m representing the ratepayers of my ward; they’ve told me how to vote, and I’m doing what they told me.

“Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with the multiplex, I’d like to see a new one built in Portage, but when you’re sending tenders … I want the complete quote.”

Trimble said he wouldn’t comment on how his councillors voted on Tuesday, but he did say he believed Schaub and the team at Tower Engineering had properly researched the total costs involved in the project.

“I think, as was explained, that the tenders will go out in four different sections, and we should have the majority of them back before construction actually gets underway,” he told the Herald-Leader after the vote. “They stage the tenders because they go to different construction companies; it’s an ongoing process, so not all of those tenders are going back at the same time.”

For Simpson, even though the vote didn’t go his way, he’s proud he was able to ask the questions the residents who attended the meeting weren’t able to ask.

“I was concerned, and I think that the ratepayers who were there today left with the understanding that somebody spoke up and asked questions,” he said. “I felt that the truth needed to be coming out there, and the facts needed to be out there so the people know what’s going on.”

Would you build a house this way ?

You want to build a house. You have no money but can get it.

You have a guesstimate of what it will cost when it is done.

You send out a tender for the basement, you take the best price and start digging a hole.

While the basement is being built, you send out a tender for the framing. The tender prices come back and while they are a little higher than your initial guesstimate, you still go ahead and accept the best price.

Now you send out a tender for the next phase. It comes back much higher than the initial guesstimates, but you have invested alot of money already . What do you do?

Do you cancel the project and walk away, or do you bite the bullet, pay the money, and keep building at any cost. The companies you are tendering with know that you can’t turn back now, you have too much money invested .

At every step along the way the prices will go up higher than the guesstimates and their is nothing you can do about it.

Would you believe this is the way the tendering process works for the Portage Multiplex? There will be no idea what the final cost will be until there is already site development underway.

If you wanted to build a house with no final cost and had to borrow every dollar from the bank to do so, would you get any money? With no business plans? With no idea how much it will cost to operate?

They would laugh you out of the building.

But this is the way the City of Portage la Prairie and the RM of Portage La Prairie will look after the money that they receive from the taxpayers .

Based on responses to questions asked by councilors at the RM Council meeting on June 24, this is the process that the Multiplex will use. I applaud some of the Rural councilors who at least asked questions of the Stantec representative. With the recent announcement of the downsizing and costing issues I would of expected every person on council to have concerns but most remained silent.

The 45 Rural residents squeezed into the council chambers had many concerns, but Reeve Toby Trimble made it clear that he would not allow any one to speak to council on such short notice.

So the resolution was passed in less than 5 minutes.

Isn’t democracy a great system?

As a taxpayer, are you as “proud” of this fiasco in the making as our elected officials are?

Or do you get choked up every time you think about how badly this entire project has been mishandled?

Sound Off In The Comments !

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Save the Island Rally Update.

Just got back from the Save the Island Rally held at Portage City Hall. Approximately 300 people showed up to voice their opinions on the proposed location and a representative was able to make a presentation to council.

The information received from City council has the project scaled back by reducing it to one rink and an expanded wave pool. The second rink will be added as a second phase when they can borrow more money in a few years. The total cost will now be 35.7 million with 5 million from the province and 3.8 million from Federal Funding.

Most importantly the council was adamant that the location will not be changed. It will be built on the island no matter what the residents say.

So now Portage will have two Splash Islands, and 2 separate arena facilities with duplicate costs while losing a competitive pool, a grandstand, a race track and making Island Park a traffic jam and parking lot.

This is progress?

The city council would not answer any of the questions posed by the group, they responded by saying that information would be coming at a later date while forcing through the tender at a special meeting Tuesday at 12:45 PM

If information was forthcoming 6 months ago we wouldn’t be in this situation today.

Organisers indicated they may have as many as 2,000 signatures from concerned citizens on the save the island petition.

So now, where do we go from here?

Comment below !

Save our Island Petition

There was a standing room only crowd at the information meeting held Thursday evening.

Among other plans moving forward is a petition campaign. To help with this, this website has launched the following online petition to help the group.

[[petition-1]]

What about spinoff?

Posted from the Letters to the Editor in the Portage Daily Graphic June 18 2008

What about spinoff?

With so many unanswered questions surrounding the construction of the multiplex, I have one for the city’s Economic Development Committee. How can you recommend the centre be built on the island?

A forty million dollar civic project should produce millions in spinoffs, but all I see are increased expenses. A centre built on already owned land at the Republic Park, with exits out Angle Road (recently upgraded for heavy traffic), would present the opportunity for development in the east end. It takes little foresight to predict a hotel, restaurant, gas bar, fast food and other developments servicing the new centre in the eastern end of Portage.

What new private developments are forseen with the centre located on the island?

A project such as the multiplex should increase the city tax base, not add costs to those already here.

Yours truly,

Craig O’Reilly

Portage la Prairie

City moves one step closer in plan to lobby for increased debt capacity

Anybody want to hazard a guess why the City of Portage la Prairie wants to change the rules so they can borrow more money ?

As published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 10th 2008

The city of Portage la Prairie has passed its first hurdle in an attempt to have the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) lobby the Manitoba government to change the way the province assesses municipal debt.

Members at the AMM’s 2008 Central District Annual Meeting, held in Portage today, voted in favour of the city’s resolution to bring the matter to a vote at the AMM annual convention in November.

The city drafted the resolution because it’s concerned that the Manitoba Municipal Board (MMB) limits the amount of money municipal governments are allowed to borrow to seven per cent of the total portioned assessment of their tax base. The problem the city sees with the system is the seven per cent includes borrowing the city has undertaken that will not be paid by property tax revenues, restricting the city’s borrowing capabilities.

“It feels good to get it through this first step,” said Coun. Dave Quinn, head of the city’s finance, legislative and property committee. “We’re looking at trying to change something for all municipalities, it feels good to do something for Portage, but when you can spread that a little bit wider, I think that’s even better.”

The resolution will face another vote at the AMM annual convention in November, and if it passes, the organization will begin lobbying the provincial government to change the way the MMB looks at municipalities’ debt loads.

Save our Island Meeting Thursday Night

Save our Island Meeting Thursday Night to be held at Centennial Hall at 7PM.

Centennial Hall is located North of the tracks at 601 Tupper St N.

Be sure to come and voice your opinions as this is about you !

Here are some talking points to get things going.

Island Park Concerns already voiced

1. Heritage aspect:
(a) Bridge – one of few remaining wooden bridges in continuous use
(b) race track – one of the oldest in Manitoba as well as one of the best in the country, with earth specially brought from Kentucky to be incorporated in laying of the track.
(c) uniqueness of a tranquil island and lake in the middle of our city

2. Effect on wildlife, deer, ducks geese

3. Instability of land for such a structure

4. Land not owned by city – must be leased

5. Limited access

6. Excessive costs due to # 3, 4, 5

7. Effect of traffic on Royal Rd. S, Crescent Rd and Broadway (5th St. E)

All about the green for the PCU Centre

As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 6th 2008

The PCU Centre proposed to be built on the fairgrounds at Island Park in Portage la Prairie is a little short of the type of green it takes to construct such a project. However, once the recreation complex is completed, the building will definitely not be short on the kind of green it takes to be environmentally friendly.

That’s because the designers of the building have made sure to include enough environmentally sustainable features the project has been able to be registered as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental and Design (LEED) Silver-rated project.

“Right from the start, this was to be a LEED Silver building; that was a given,” explained Guenter Schaub, project manager for the multiplex and principal structural engineer at Tower Engineering. “And we were happy that it was because that means it’s a sustainable building.”

The LEED green building rating system was originally started by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1998, and was adopted by the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) in 2003.

According to the CaGBC website, buildings in Canada currently contribute as much as 35 per cent of the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Their goal is to reduce the percentage of emissions in Canada to zero by 2030, by using the LEED program to make sure new buildings, such as the PCU Centre, are built more efficiently and use less energy, create less waste and conserve water.

“LEED looks at energy efficiency and sustainability, and it’s not just heating and insulation, although that is a big part of it,” explained Schaub. “It looks at a lot of things, like whether the site you’re building on has been built on before, or whether it’s raw land that you’re plowing up. It looks at what you’re doing with rain water: are you storing it on site and making use of it or are you just dumping it into the municipal system?; and where your building materials are coming from: are they coming from close by or are they coming from miles and miles away?”

The CaGBC LEED program uses five principal categories when deciding how green a building is and whether it will be given a silver, gold or platinum rating. The five categories are site sustainability, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resource and indoor environmental quality.

Each category has a number of points associated with it, and the more goals a project hits, the more points it receives, giving it a higher rating.

Out of a possible 70 points, the PCU Centre had to hit between 33 and 38 points to receive the silver certification.

“Green building is really a tool to help communities to achieve their sustainability objectives,” said Rodney McDonald, chairman of CaGBC’s Manitoba chapter. “We’d like to congratulate the RM of Portage and the City of Portage for registering the project with the CaGBC, and pursuing a LEED certification; it shows real leadership for the community.”

To be able to register the project as LEED Silver, designers of the PCU Centre incorporated a number of environmentally sound ideas into the construction. For example, the building will use excess heat produced by the artificial ice plant, which keeps the two ice surfaces cold, to help heat both the building and pool water.

Also, water runoff from the parking lots and building surfaces will be naturally filtered and stored in a retention pond located on the fairground property before it is sent back to the lake. The pond will be aerated by three windmills, and the process is designed to remove foreign matter from the water, as well as provide a nice spot for people to sit around the multiplex.

“Basically, we’re making sure that we will not be putting anything into the ground that we shouldn’t,” explained Coun. Jeff Bereza, chairman of the city’s planning and economic development committee. “All the water will be pretreated before it goes into a water body like Crescent Lake.”

A number of smaller things will also help the building be as green as possible, such as using natural light instead of standard lighting wherever possible and using recycled materials in the concrete.

Not only will the LEED Silver designation aid the environment, it will also save some of the money needed to build the project.

The federal and provincial governments have each promised to give the project $3.3 million in public funding, but both levels of government would not have offered the money if the PCU Centre had not achieved at least a LEED Silver rating.

Portage Mayor Ken Brennan said although the provincial and federal funding played a role in the decision to reach the LEED Silver rating, he said there were other factors in the decision process as well.

“We wanted to build a building that makes sense as far as the environment is concerned, as far as energy consumption is concerned, and as far as operating costs are concerned,” he said. ‘The fact that it’s somewhere between a LEED Silver and LEED Gold rating means that it is a highly energy-efficient, green-type building, and that is just the right thing to do in this day and age.”

Brennan said some of the environmental choices made by the designers will also save the city money in running the facility, once it is operational. He pointed to the plan to use the heat from the ice plant to heat the building as a prime example of why the LEED Silver rating is good for both the environment and the city’s pocketbook as well.

“That is a huge cost saving to the city as far as operational costs down the road, and it’s also good for the environment,” explained the mayor. “We’re not using a lot of energy that we needn’t use, and we’re not blasting a lot of hydrocarbons by burning gas.”

At a public meeting held on May 15, the city announced the multiplex, which was originally estimated to cost no more than $38 million was actually going to come in at $42 million, and as a result, the project has been put on hold while costs are shaved.

The cost-saving measures taken to bring the price tag on the PCU Centre down to a workable amount will not affect the environmental aspects included in the original plan, according to Brennan.

“That’s something that we can’t change with the cost because it’s part of the criteria for the federal and provincial money,” he said. “I don’t think that we’d want to anyway because it’s important that we build that type of green building in our community.”

Bereza pointed out the PCU Centre is not only planned for people presently living in Portage and in the area, but as something people will be able to use and be proud of for a long time. He said spending a little more money right now to make sure the building is environmentally sustainable will make sure the sports complex will be around for a long time into the future.

“I think that when we looked at building the multiplex, we looked at building something for generations to come,” said Bereza about the project. “To be as environmentally responsible as possible and to make a project that is very energy efficient and is very ecologically efficient was incredibly important to us.”

Tupper, Crescent Road designated truck routes

As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 10 2008

The City of Portage la Prairie is driving forward with plans to designate two city roadways as truck routes.

At Monday’s city council meeting, councillors voted to approve an amendment to the traffic bylaw that will see sections of Crescent Road East and Tupper Street South turned into truck routes in order to give heavy traffic access to the temporary causeway currently under construction west of the Crescent Lake bridge.

Council was poised to approve the amendment at its May 26 meeting, but decided to defer the decision after meeting stiff opposition from local residents.

The city’s transportation committee met with city engineers and the RCMP last week to look into any compromises that could be made.

“In our committee meeting, we were very cognizant of the opinions expressed at the council meeting two weeks ago, albeit that the project had to go ahead,” explained transportation committee chairman Coun. Orville Wagner after the meeting. “I don’t presume to suggest that everybody is going to be satisfied — as a matter of fact I’m sure they’re not — but it’s one inconvenience that that section is going to have to put up with.”

The changes will mean the north side of Crescent Road from Tupper to Royal Road and the west side of Tupper Street South from Dufferin Avenue to Crescent Road will be designated 24-hour, no-parking zones.

One of the concerned citizens who came to the May 26 meeting was Keith Hutchinson, who lives at the corner of Tupper and Crescent. He told council he receives dinners daily from Meals on Wheels, and the no parking zone would mean the drivers would have nowhere to park around his home.

The transportation committee changed the original amendment, to give an extra 10 metres of parking on the east side of the south end of Tupper Street to make sure essential services had access to Hutchinson’s home.

“We were particularly cognizant of the needs of Mr. Hutchinson, who requires services to be provided to him,” said Wagner. “The 10 metres is right adjacent to Mr. Hutchinson’s house, so hopefully that will resolve that particular problem.”

City moves ahead with plans to designate truck route

As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 9th 2008

The city of Portage la Prairie is driving forward with plans to designate two city roadways as truck routes.

At the June 9 city council meeting, councillors voted to approve an amendment to the traffic bylaw that will see sections of Crescent Road East and Tupper Street South turned into truck routes in order to give heavy traffic access to the temporary causeway currently under construction west of the bridge.

Council was poised to approve the amendment at it’s May 26 meeting, but decided to defer the decision after meeting stiff opposition from local residents.

The city’s transportation committee met with city engineers and the RCMP last week to look into any compromises that could be made.

“In our committee meeting we were very cognizant of the opinions expressed at the council meeting two weeks ago, albeit that the project had to go ahead” explained transportation committee chairman Coun. Orville Wagner after the meeting. “I don’t presume to suggest that everybody is going to be satisfied, as a matter of fact I’m sure they’re not, but it’s one inconvenience that that section is going to have to put up with.”

The changes will mean the north side of Crescent Road from Tupper to Royal Road and the west side of Tupper Street South from Dufferin Avenue to Crescent Road will be designated as 24-hour no-parking zones, once the temporary causeway is completed around June 27.

Look for the full story and more news from city council in The Daily Graphic newspaper.