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Business View Magazine
102 Business View – October
Infrastructure
T
he commissioner of transportation and public
works for the city of Cambridge, Ontario is first
challenged by thin-walled cast iron water mains
that were used in the 1970s and are now, after 40
years, failing to live up to what was billed as an 80-to-
100-year life span at their installation.
Second, the city has a large volume of small-diameter
– four inches or smaller – water mains that are
performing well materially, but are not providing flow
capacity warranted by increases in demand or required
by more stringent fire-protection standards and will
need replacement.
The city began an improvement initiative in earnest in
2010 and Elliott now forecasts that the 15-year program
has become a 10-year program.
“In 10 years, we will be fully caught up and at a point
of reaching the sustainable levels,” he said.
A 10-year financial plan was approved by the city
council that includes an average 7 percent annual water
rate increase to fund the remaining projects. It’s a big
pill to swallow, Elliott conceded, by a far smaller one
than it would have been had the reactive approach
continued.
“If we hadn’t been able to identify the backlog and
know what we truly had, there’s no way we could
have forecast what would be sustainable,” he said.
“That’s the magic behind the cloak here. Having that
knowledge makes it possible for us to plan, to sell the
idea to the ratepayers and the council to get the money
we need. And we need a lot of money.”
Toward that end, past provincial legislation is
becoming an asset.
Because Ontario law mandates that municipalities
must establish improvement plans and must work
toward a point of
sustainability,
those
responsible for making
the repairs can go to
the city government and
not have to plead their
case for getting the work
done.
“We can go to council
and say this is not really an
option,” Elliott said. “This is basically saying you have to
do it, and we’re putting together the best plan to lessen
the burden, lessen the hurt as much as we can, but still
keeping on target for doing the work. If we don’t have
that provincial legislation behind us to hammer that
message home, we probably don’t succeed.”
That’s the precise battle that those seeking monies
for improvements on things to which the provincial
mandate doesn’t apply – roads, street lights, sidewalks,
bridges and retaining walls among them – have to fight,
against citizens and politicians who are sometimes
looking to fund more eye-catching projects that aren’t
based on need.
“It’s not that I don’t want to see arenas and pools
or what not,” Elliott said. “It’s that battle of need vs.
want that the public and the politicians will often go
for the so-called sexy projects. Nobody wants to say
‘Hey, we fixed the sanitary sewer.’ It’s all great stuff, but
when it’s done at a harm to funding some of the basic
infrastructure that a city needs, it really puts us in a bind.
“I need to have lunch, but I want to go and rent a Jet
Ski and go down the river. So what do you do? You go
down and Jet Ski and you go hungry for a while.”
When it comes to infrastructure issues – and
It’s All Right There
Two issues from the past are forming the
to-do list for the future for George Elliott.
George Elliot
City of Cambridge, Ontario
