We can afford a selfie sign. But we're too poor to light it

Rattled by a 100-percent cost overrun on the Huron Street welcoming plaza, City Council voted unanimously last night to deny additional cash and send the proposed project back to the drawing board.

It was the second budget overrun on the welcoming feature, intended to greet visitors arriving on the International Bridge.

The original budget was set at $160,000.

But PUC subsequently indicated it needed to move a transformer to facilitate construction, prompting an additional $40,000 request approved during 2016 budget deliberations.

Last night, Planning Director Don McConnell was seeking still more cash, indicating the price tag had risen to almost $400,000.

"I think we were all surprised that it is very expensive," McConnell told councillors.

Ward 2 Councillor Susan Myers grilled McConnell for specifics on the 100 percent overrun, but the planning director offered little other than to cite unspecified additional construction costs. 

McConnell said his staff had met with consultants who developed the original estimate, but when they then sat down with the contractor working on the Huron Street reconstruction, they were advised the price tag would be much higher.

"The price that you have now is the price [the contractor] provided us," McConnell said.

Even the $400,000 budget removed a maple leaf-emblazoned ground surface from the project, replacing it with plain concrete.

City staff whittled down the overrun with spare cash they found in the Downtown Development Initiative budget, including $35,000 that wasn't spent on Queen Street tree replacements and $29,000 in forfeited improvement grants.

McConnell said the city now has four options:

• approve $125,000 in new spending to cover the overrun and build the full project
• limit the project to previously approved funding of $200,000.
• cancel the project
• re-tender the project next year and hope for a better price

McConnell advised against re-tendering the construction.

"Generally, prices don't go down when you re-tender," he said

Councillor Myers asked what kind of welcoming feature could be built if the budget is limited to the previously approved $200,000.

"Mr. McConnell, I have to ask you this, as the senior planner with the city. Would you be satisfied with what the end result is... Would you be satisfied that it is a sufficient welcome feature at this point, that if it were a number of years before we were able to find the funds, that it would not be an embarrassment to the community? That's what I need to know," Myers demanded.

"Yes. I believe that's a viable option for City Council to consider," McConnell responded.

"What we're missing is a very large concrete plaza, we're missing the lighting, and we're missing the landscaping. But I believe that's something we could look at over the next couple of years on a fairly modest level," the planning director said.

Mayor Provenzano and Ward 5 Councillor Marchy Bruni both wanted city staff to return with specifics on how to make the project work.

"It would be up to staff to come back to you with a very clear idea of what it's going to look like and what it's going to cost," the mayor said.

"It's really sending staff back to the drawing board to come back to council. I don't want council to try to visualize what this thing's going to look like and ourselves trying to put a pen to paper on what it's going to cost."

After being unanimously turned down by City Council last night, staff have been asked to return with new ideas and visuals at either the next council meeting or the one following that.

The large concrete letters and a similarly sized red maple leaf will cost just $36,400.

Engineering and building the letters is to be sole-sourced to Ed's Concrete from Stratford, Ontario.