CANMORE – One capital project was scaled back to help fund another provincially-required change in a Town of Canmore-owned building.
Council approved the cancellation of a cooling enhancement for four rooms on the second floor of Elevation Place to cover extra costs for a cooling system replacement at the Civic Centre.
The cooling system replacement for the Civic Centre, which is required by the province, was originally budgeted at $275,000 in the 2022 budget. It will bump up to $510,000, with the extra $235,000 coming from the asset replacement and rehabilitation reserve.
The cancelling of the $266,000 cooling enhancement project for rooms 207, 208 and 2014 at Elevation Place – with $35,000 already being spent – will be scaled down to install enhanced air exchange systems for rooms 207, 208, 209 a/b and 214 for $141,000.
“This is a longstanding problem,” said Mayor Sean Krausert of the Elevation Place room air issues. “It’s 10 years. It’s not going away. If anything, it’s only going to get worse.
“I think this is working within the current budget we have and I think it’s a good first step to determine what the air exchange infrastructure can have on the experiences in those fitness rooms and from there we’ll have an educated assessment on what is needed, if anything, to cool those rooms.”
Coun. Jeff Mah was the lone vote of opposition.
The report noted the project at Elevation Place had been requested since 2014 after the meeting rooms were switched into fitness rooms.
Elevation Place’s rooms 207 and 208 weren’t designed to handle heat output from being fitness rooms. Room 214 is used as a weight room and has “warmer than ideal temperatures since it is located beneath the mechanical room and beside the aquatic centre,” according to the report.
The report highlighted the Civic Centre uses domestic water to cool the building, which diverts cold water and puts it through the building’s cooling system and brings it back to the domestic supply.
The process is monitored daily by Town staff and has weekly checks by EPCOR.
The province told the Town in 2021 the method of using domestic water isn’t permitted and it had to be decommissioned by June 1, 2023. The Town received an extension to Dec. 1, 2024.
The report noted the Town could keep using domestic water, but it would have to be sent to the sanitary system rather than returned to domestic water supply.
Coun. Wade Graham said it was “disappointing the province is making policy changes that cost us $500,000 without any consideration for those budgets, but par for the course.”
Ryan Fournier, the press secretary for the Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas, said the direction from the provincial ministry is a condition of the 2021 approval under the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act “for operating the water treatment plant and potable water distribution system.”
“The transformation to a traditional HVAC system for the [Civic] Centre will eliminate the town’s monitoring costs associated with the use of cooling water and the small pressure that this practice has been putting on Canmore’s water distribution system,” he said.
He noted the Town has also applied to extend the change to Dec. 1, 2025, with it being under review.
Other options presented to council were returning to 2025 budget talks with an increase in funding for the Elevation Place project. The increase options would be between $50,000 to $150,000, depending on the scope of the project.
Council could’ve decreased the budget – which would’ve seen between $125,000 to $175,000 returned to reserves – and had less work completed on the rooms.
Whitney Smithers, the Town’s general manager of municipal infrastructure, highlighted to council the increase in project costs as City of Calgary capital projects have come in on an average of 20 per cent higher this year.
In the City of Calgary’s biannual infrastructure insights report for the first quarter of 2024, stated “inflationary pressure is reflected in the City’s capital bids being awarded at approximately 20 per cent above their [expected accuracy of plus or minus 10 per cent] cost estimates.”
She emphasized to council the difficult decisions on what projects to move forward with and which to put off in the coming budget cycle due to increases in inflationary costs.
“I can tell you, for sure, what you’re going to see as we get into the next capital plan and capital budget is fewer projects that cost more money,” she said.
“It is a wicked problem for council and for administration. … These projects are good things for our community. They need to get done, but we have a lot of projects that are good for the community and need to get done and we can’t do them all. There is that bigger picture perspective we’re going to have to make going into future budget discussions.”
