cityhallsign

The City of Swift Current is continuing with their asset management initiative, as a way to help address their infrastructure needs.

"Our infrastructure deficit, to a certain extent, is no different than any of the other cities, either in the province or across the country," said Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Tim Marcus. "We all have assets that have been aging and are in need of replacement or will need it in the near future, and this report identifies which ones we have the largest gap in, in terms of what's been done to replace them and what's coming to replace them."

Marcus adds the city is looking at ways to balance maintenance of current infrastructure items and replacing aging items.

"The infrastructure, historically, has never gone in at a steady, even pace," he said. "It's gone in during periods of growth, and there hasn't been much going in during periods when the economy wasn't doing that great. When you fast-forward to when the asset's used up and needs replacing, there are big chunks that need replacing in short periods of time, and this report is going to try and provide a process where we try and smooth that out, so we don't have a $30 million cost in one year, and then five years where there's very little."

On Monday, the Federal Government announced a new stream of community infrastructure funding through the New Building Canada Fund. Saskatchewan will receive $436.7 million of that funding over the next ten years, and the provincial government has opened up the application process for that funding.

Marcus says having this asset management plan in place will be a benefit to the city should they apply for funding.

"The federal government has said that one of the criteria in place is that cities would be eligible for funding under that program if they have an asset management plan in place," he added. "I think part of it is so that when you're going to them for funding, you're not going to fix something that doesn't need fixing just because there's money for that item."