Big borrow approved
Town council has signed off on a law that could see Morinville go $22 million in debt to pay for the new regional rec-centre.Council voted unanimously in favour of a borrowing bylaw on June 26 that authorizes the town to borrow up to $22,020,000 this year to pay for the Morinville rec-centre now under construction just east of town.
The town has spent about $6.8 million on the project so far, which was on course to be two per cent over budget (about $709,150) due to changes in design fees and furniture costs, town financial services director Shawna Jason told council. This bylaw was meant to cover the rest of the $28.8-million project’s cost if the town receives no sponsorship dollars.
Jason said that this borrowing would likely happen in two chunks and be paid off using Municipal Sustainability Initiative and federal gas tax money over about 20 years. If the town devoted all the cash it got from those two grants to this debt, it could pay it off in 16 years. The town would have $4.4 million left in borrowing capacity under its self-imposed debt limit if it borrowed the whole $22 million.
Jason emphasized that this was the “worst-case scenario,” as the town expected to get grants and sponsorships to reduce the amount it had to borrow.
“It will only get better and not worse at this point.”
Jason said this borrowing was not likely to affect any projects in the town’s capital plans.
Mayor Barry Turner said when the town started working on the rec-centre four years ago it predicted that it would have sponsorship dollars from Sturgeon County at this point. Delays in the Sturgeon Refinery mean that the county doesn’t have the oil revenues from that project yet, and has yet to give the county any cash for the rec-centre. The town has to prepare for the worst at this point and take steps to ensure it can pay for the rec-centre if sponsors and grants don’t come through.
“This project is the right one for Morinville at this time,” he said, and council has committed to minimize its tax impact to residents.
Jason said she planned to take out the first $9-million chunk of debt in August with the rest to come in late fall.
Sgt. Paperwork?
Morinville RCMP are test-piloting a secret weapon in the war against red-tape: a guy at a typewriter.Morinville acting RCMP Staff Sgt. Chris Palfy gave his first quarter report to town council on June 26.
In it, he spoke of how the detachment was the first in Alberta to test-drive a new system meant to keep officers on the road and out of the office: the PROS Data Centre.
Today’s cops have to type up a vast number of forms and reports whenever they investigate a crime, Palfy said in an interview. A simple two-car collision with no injuries might take two minutes to describe over the phone but 20 minutes to type into the RCMP’s computer system.
“There’s no crime that happens in the detachment,” he said, and every minute officers are at their desk filing reports is one they’re not in the field fighting crime.
The PROS Data Centre isn’t some high-tech computer system, but an office worker with a phone and a keyboard, Palfy said. Instead of having an officer come in to file a report, the officer dictates their report over the phone and the office worker at the detachment types it up for them.
The detachment has only been using the system for about a week, and officers were still figuring out its pros and cons, said Morinville RCMP Cpl. Sheldon Robb. Still, it’s a lot cheaper to have an office worker type reports than a cop, and research suggests that every minute of dictation could save a cop six minutes of data entry.
“It could be a huge savings for members’ time and money and more time for patrolling and police work,” Robb said.
Palfy also prevailed on council to speed up work on the detachment’s new building, which was set to be built in 2021.
“We literally have lineups every day for the washroom,” he said, and the 1982-era building has black mould and asbestos in its walls.
“The sooner we start that (planning) process, the better.”
