Long-sought Gas Tax Money Available For Road Repairs
Saturday, October 26, 2013 @ 4:00 AM
Prince George, B.C. – There will be a significant increase in the amount of money spent on road repairs in Prince George next year, with some of the funds coming from the federal gas tax instead of directly out of the bank accounts of taxpayers.
City council will be holding a Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night, and tucked away in the agenda, under the Infrastructure section of the 2014 Capital Plan, is a staff insert stating that “Gas tax funds have now been identified as a valid source of funding for Road Rehabilitation and it is proposed that the Road Rehabilitation Program be increased from $4,981,746 to the RIVA (Real-time Infrastructure Valuation Analysis) target of $7 million.” The information says the increase will come solely from the Gas Tax funding and does not require any increase in the Road Rehabilitation Levy.
In other words roughly $5 million for road rehab work next year will come from the local tax levy and the other $2 million from the federal gas tax for a $7 million investment in city streets. Just over $5 million was spent on roads this year.
Council approved a 1% tax levy increase to the Road Rehabilitation Levy and created the General Infrastructure Reinvestment Levy this year. It is proposed that the reinvestment levy be boosted by just over half a million dollars in 2014 and by further 1% increases in each of 2015 and 2016.
What isn’t quite clear at this time is just when the change came about allowing for federal gas tax funds to be used for road rehabilitation projects.
Comments
It looks like they found a fifty dollar bill that went through the wash
This is after of course they went and borrowed a hundred.
A few thoughts on this
-Has the city found a dance partner to secure better asphalt pricing or will we continue to pay 35% more than other interior cities for the same product. I am sick of hearing ” it is too late to do anything this year but next year we will be all over it, no really” Maybe the changes at the city purchasing department will help in this regard.
-Releasing the amount in the pot is really tipping your hand in the competitive bidding process, especially when Columbia seems to have a monopoly in recent years. Having $7 million this year may tempt out of town firms to give them a run.
-Has Columbia sorted out the quality control problems at their batch plant and does the city audit this process and get reports from them on all samples done.
-With the warranty lasting only one year does the city’s fancy new pavement monitoring program track this work over a longer period to ensure we are getting proper value for money.
“Releasing the amount in the pot is really tipping your hand in the competitive bidding process”
It is quite common to know the ball park figure for a construction project before tenders go out to bid. I have never seen a disadvantage in the process in the case where there are several bidders.
If we have a sole sourcing situation that we cannot get around, then it becomes a matter of negotiation right from the beginning. So, we are depending on the ability of City Staff to negotiate a fair deal. What is their track record with that?
Much of this kind of civil work is bid on unit prices. In order to bid on unit price basis, a scope of work will be required since unit prices for larger amounts of work should be lower than for smaller projects.
It has been accepted by the courts that if the scope changes so that there is less work, the contractor has legitimate grounds to invoice for a higher amount. The change is not the contractor’s doing, it is the owner’s doing and the owner is liable for the consequences.
Just in time for the winter games, how convenient oh well just get ready for the biggest tax increase p.g.ever saw a year later.
Could you imagine all the screaming that would happen if they put the same crap asphalt on our highways that they are putting on our city streets.
Some points to ponder.
1. The Gas Tax Fund (Community Works Fund) 2005-2014 provides funding for a variety of capital and planning projects which include.
a. Public Transit
b. Local Roads, Bridges and Tunnels
c. Community Energy
d. Solid Waste
e. Water/Wastewater; and
f. Capacity Building/Integrated Community Sustainability Planning.
Sooo. It appears that the Gas Tax money could be used for local roads. However a number of years ago the City said that this money could not be used for road rehabilitation.
The PG Community Energy System was built at a cost of $14,141,000.00. $4,366,000.00 came from the Community Works Fund. In addition the City will pay $100,000.00 per year for 10 years from the Community Works Fund (Gas Tax) to help pay for the Community Energy System.
Sooo. The question in the article as to when the Gas Tax Funds became available for road rehabilitation is a good one.
Was it always available but the money was spent on the Community Energy System.
We need to know if the City used money that could have gone into roads a few years ago for the Community Energy System, and are now going to use CWF for road rehabilitation.
So when did the changes take place, or was there in fact no changes.
That’s great, but this isn’t really sustainable. The government of the day says it’s permanent at $2 billion annual, but that’s really only good until the government of the day changes it. Then what?
We need to be structured in such a way that we can easily handle our infrastructure requirements out of general taxation. Doing otherwise only serves to kick the problem down the road a piece and solves nothing.
This is a much better strategy than that of Kinsley and crew who thought it was a good idea to fund road rehabilitation with debt, but it’s still no inline with a goal of financial sustainability.
“Prince George also pays about 30 per cent more in asphalt to repair roads than municipalities in the Okanagan.
Coun. Brian Skakun is in favour of the city investigating the ways and means to establishing its own asphalt plant.”
I am not in favour of paying a gas tax for overly expensive / priced asphalt. Better for the city to buy an asphalt plant, than purchase some industrial site 30 kms north of PG!
Comments for this article are closed.